I watched this movie Slumdog millionaire(SM).It was a good movie all right, very well directed with a good screenplay and background score. However I have seen a lot of INDIAN MOVIES which were many times better than what this movie was. I would like to stress on the phrase INDIAN MOVIES because SM (as a lot of people are either not aware of or conveniently choose to ignore) is not an Indian movie. It is a movie which had Indian actors and quite a few Indian technicians in it. It was a foreigner's take on what India was and supposedly presented to an equally foreign audience.
And what Danny Boyle had portrayed about India is not untrue but neither is it something that should make us feel proud or rather 'Inspire India' as certain sections of the media has put forth. Maybe am saying this because I am an Indian and the movie had been made by a British filmmaker but overall I think India had been portrayed in this movie as a land of slums, gangsters and call centers and the English speaking audiences apparently liked what they saw.
What the hell are these Oscars anyway? They certainly aren’t some kind of a benchmark, that’s for sure. Otherwise the maestro that A.R.Rahman is, he would have won a lot of them already. His scores in this movie were certainly very good but he had composed much better scores in the past for much better movies and how is it that those works were never considered for Oscars. Now am not mentioning this for the sake of comparison but a Bombay or Roja directed by Mani Ratnam were such incredible movies that they left a lot of us Indians gaping and so did the musical scores that Rahman had composed for those movies and it had made him a household name and also fetched him national awards, but its only now that some foreign audiences have realized what a wonder this man was and had honored him with an Oscar all because this movie SM had been lapped up by the English speaking audiences.
It just goes to show within what kind of narrow confines that these academy awards are given.But without taking away anything from A.R.Rahman who deserves all the awards that exist for his extraordinary brilliance, there is nothing here for India as a nation to cheer about as our media claims. It’s akin to saying that the whole of America would cheer if Steven Spielberg was to be honored with a National award of India for his incredible film making prowess. Can you ever imagine such a scenario!
And what Danny Boyle had portrayed about India is not untrue but neither is it something that should make us feel proud or rather 'Inspire India' as certain sections of the media has put forth. Maybe am saying this because I am an Indian and the movie had been made by a British filmmaker but overall I think India had been portrayed in this movie as a land of slums, gangsters and call centers and the English speaking audiences apparently liked what they saw.
What the hell are these Oscars anyway? They certainly aren’t some kind of a benchmark, that’s for sure. Otherwise the maestro that A.R.Rahman is, he would have won a lot of them already. His scores in this movie were certainly very good but he had composed much better scores in the past for much better movies and how is it that those works were never considered for Oscars. Now am not mentioning this for the sake of comparison but a Bombay or Roja directed by Mani Ratnam were such incredible movies that they left a lot of us Indians gaping and so did the musical scores that Rahman had composed for those movies and it had made him a household name and also fetched him national awards, but its only now that some foreign audiences have realized what a wonder this man was and had honored him with an Oscar all because this movie SM had been lapped up by the English speaking audiences.
It just goes to show within what kind of narrow confines that these academy awards are given.But without taking away anything from A.R.Rahman who deserves all the awards that exist for his extraordinary brilliance, there is nothing here for India as a nation to cheer about as our media claims. It’s akin to saying that the whole of America would cheer if Steven Spielberg was to be honored with a National award of India for his incredible film making prowess. Can you ever imagine such a scenario!
