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Slumdog Millionaire (2008) More at IMDbPro »

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transatlantic cinema, 12 April 2009
Author: ruiresende84 (ruiresende84@gmail.com) from Porto, Portugal

I think there are two layers of observations from where we can watch this film.

One way is to look at the film as a small part of something bigger. That bigger thing would be the possibility of making this experience become a certain rule in film world. The growing proximity between bolly and Hollywood, the possibility that we might start getting films bounded financially and thematically (and culturally) by this proximity. If we consider this approach, than the fact that this film would become so celebrated by the key agents of promotion of American films (awards) would be a kind of signal for this new age. I think the other layer of approach i propose may confirm this one:

this is a kind of film i catalog as "ascending", which basically means that we start off in hell, and we climb stairs of suffering throughout the film until we arrive at heaven. A sort of inverted dynamics, that we've seen in Cidade de Deus, Blindness, Irreversible (where the arc is literally inverted). In this case, Danny Boyle picks up the experiments Meirelles made in the slums of Brazil, and produces his own version. Boyle relies more on framing and camera work/positioning (he always has). Meirelles' films are, before anything, brilliant pieces of editing. So, on the visual side, we have different approaches, but which convey the same objective of moving into the slum, of exploring with a frantic eye the darkness of those daily lives. This film is brilliant in that respect. Yet, as it progresses, it moves away from the slum, and the cinematic choices answer to that, so the pace slows down, and little by little we end with a bollywood romantic ending. Love is the reward for the suffering, in this world that we now know to be, after all, a fantasy one. So Bollywood meets certain ideas of dark cinema. Remember my first approach?

My opinion: 4/5

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

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