There is a certain mixture and intertwining of cliché and pain, the ever present battle of good vs. evil, the plight and struggle of the poor, being abused and taken advantage of by the rich and privileged.  What am I talking about? The story the movie Slumdog Millionaire.  Yes, I’ve finally made it out to the movie theatres to see it yesterday.  I liked it.  And I give the writer credit for making such a cliché story, one that has been written, played and filmed dozens of times over, so captivating and interesting.  Even the switching of the storyline between past/future to explain events isn’t anything new.  The movie was essentially based on a turnkey solution, but what I believe made it so captivating was what the story was actually about – a story which mainstream America is still unfamiliar with: the horrific conditions in which people in the slums of the rest of the world live in, and they aren’t specific to India – you can find such slum cities in Brazil, China, and all over major African cities.  It was so powerful to the rest of the western world because we just aren’t used to seeing something so cruelly real; the ghettos of America, Canada, Germany, Norway, or France are nothing like what that scenery depicted, and as bad as we think our ghettos are and as bad as we think our crime rates and poverty are, we don’t even come close to what was depicted in Slumdog Millionaire.

With elements ranging from classic Bollywood, and mainstream American cinema, sprinkled with lines from Clark Gable movies, the movie not only brings drama but captivates you, pulls you in and makes you feel Jamal’s emotion, fear, love, hate, and despair.  And while the story is seemingly one story throughout the movie, there are what appear to be several micro stories: the story of the slum, the plight of the poor people in it, the religious discrimination the Muslims faced from the Hindus, the overall story of Salim and Jamal growing up, “dodging bullets” and surviving, the love story which develops between Latika and Jamal, the story of the world of gangsters and their abuses and exploitations – the dark gritty world of child prostitution, and exploitation, of murder and torture, the story about the relationship of the two brothers – one honest and timid, but full of heart when necessary and righteous indignation, the other thirsty for power and money who betrays his younger brother several times, but in the end feeling his conscience bother him and heroically risking his own life for that of his younger brother, and eventually dying in order to make things right for two lives which he had cause so much pain.  There are also two more stories, seemingly of less significance, but which caught my attention more-so than the previous ones: the story of the game show host – his smugness and distaste turning to jealousy and anger, and the finally the story of the relationship between the abusive police detective with his henchmen and Jamal.  It’s interesting how feelings of the antagonists toward our protagonist develop and change and in the end oppose each other.  The game show host in the beginning was slightly amused by the slumdog, slightly smug but didn’t yet hate him; contrasted with the detective who hated our hero, subjecting him to torture from the beginning “guilty until proven innocent” is classically depicted in the police micro-story.  The detective, as the plot unravels starts to like him, and while he may not understand him, sympathizes with him, and even provides a police escort to take Jamal back to the second day of the show, while our game show host’s contempt and hatred grows, he becomes jealous that this educated slumdog who reminds him of himself is getting his shot and fame and riches much easier than the host who probably had to toil through menial jobs for years to make his fortune and fame.  These two stories which appear to be side-stories, filler footage, I believe have an incredibly powerful message.  You would expect that the host of the show would be more sympathetic toward the protagonist because of their similar pasts; he is able to understand much better what Jamal is going through and went through and how hard it is to get ahead in the world or just to simply survive when one comes from “that side of the tracks”; you would think that he would treat Jamal as “one of his own”, instead our hero got more sympathy and understanding from the policeman, who obviously didn’t grow up in the slums – and our proof of this fact is that he couldn’t understand Jamal, and was completely out of tune to what was going on in the slums, and how to obtain information from “it” – case and point is the stolen bicycle from the city official – the detective didn’t know who stole it, but Jamal, and “the entire slum” knew.

In the end the guy gets the girl, the older brother dies a martyr while killing the bad guy, and oh yeah…Jamals rich too!  One of the little clichés in the movie which can probably be taken as more of a reward at the end of a very sad story.