Slumdogs of the world, unite

DANNY BOYLE'S Slumdog Millionaire is a gripping exposé of the "new" India packaged as a rags-to-riches love story. It is based on Vikas Swarup's novel Q&A.

The film follows the lives of the Malik brothers, Jamal and Salim, and their female companion Latika on the streets of Mumbai--India's financial and trade capital. The three survive together on the bustling streets of Mumbai by their wits and charm.

They are orphans as a result of a Hindu pogrom of their Muslim neighborhood on the outskirts of the city. Following the massacre, Jamal and Salim seek shelter in a cargo from a murderous mob that has killed their mother. Latika joins them at the insistence of the younger brother Jamal who falls in love with her.

The massacre is clearly based on the real-life anti-Muslim riots of 2002 in the Indian state of Gujarat, where Hindu religious fanatics killed some 2,000 people, most of them Muslims.

Soon they fall prey to Arvind and his phone charity gang. Arvind disfigures and disables the children he lures into his grasp in order for them to beg for "pity money" on the streets, which he then pockets. This is a world that Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist would easily recognize.

Jamal, Salim and Latika try to escape one night from Arvind's clutches. Jamal and Salim succeed, but Latika is recaptured. Arvind has other plans for her. Jamal is heartbroken, yet determined to find her again. Jamal and Salim disappear into the anonymity of Mumbai's streets to the chagrin of the revenge seeking Arvind.

As Jamal (Dev Patel) and Salim (Madhur Mittal) grow into their late teens, the differences in the personalities and the boom in the Indian economy put them on different paths. Jamal becomes an assistant telemarketer--in reality a tea server or chaiwalla--to hundreds of young, English-speaking telemarketers selling products and services to customers in Britain and the United States.

The violent and angry Salim becomes an assassin and enforcer for a rich Mumbai gangster, whose various businesses are also booming in Mumbai. Latika (Freida Pinto) is forced to become the same gangster's concubine, and lives as a prisoner in his wealthy estate.

Jamal and Salim, after several years apart, agree to meet high up in a still uncompleted skyscraper. Once there, Salim muses that "down there" use to be our slum, now India is the "center of the world," as the building boom devours more and more of the outlying areas of the city. Jamal is still furious at Salim for abandoning him and imprisoning Latika in a miserable life.

Jamal decides that the only way out of the dangerous situation for him and Latika is to make some quick cash and escape. Jamal does this by bamboozling his way onto the popular Indian version of the television show So You Want to Be a Millionaire?

The host of the show Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) shoots one question after another to him, while baiting him by calling him a "chaiwalla." Jamal answers one question after another correctly as he has flashes backs through his rough-and-tumble life looking for the answers.

During an overnight break in the show, Kumar turns Jamal over to the local cops who torture for hours trying to get him admit that he cheated--after all, one of the cops says, he can't know the answer because he's just a "slumdog." Jamal is released in the morning and goes on to win the big prize and becomes a national hero to the millions watching television.

After the recent and horrible events in Mumbai it is important that many people go see this film. It is a healthy reminder that the prosperity "new" India is based on the immense misery of tens of millions of Hindus and Muslims alike, but that a particularly nasty bigotry is reserved for the Muslim minority.

Most film reviewers have called Slumdog Millionaire "a crowd pleaser," "a charmer" or a "fantasy." And while these things maybe true, I believe that the biggest appeal for audiences is that one person can rise up against impossible odds--while millions can cheer him on--because they see themselves in him.