Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire and Luck By Chance

Slumdog Millionaire has hogged too much of media headlights. There was a debate about west lapping up India’s slums and how the movie was so sentiment-evoking. I am disappointed on both the counts. Our own Indian movies have shown poverty/child prostitution/people on fringes in much more evocative manner: Do Bigha Zameen, Traffic Signal, Kalyug, Chandni Bar, Summer of 2007. And a substantial part of movie Slumdog Millionaire is similar to Traffic Signal. Though, latter takes it on a deeper level. Wait, I am not accusing Slumdog Millionaire of plagiarism. All I am saying that this movie that has been immensely moving to West, has been seen by us Indians several times before.

I have not read Vikas Swarup’s Q and A, but whatever things his story has weaved in: we have read often in magazines, watched in our movies, heard in news. It has every single thing we know: police mutely watching in case of communal riots, guides of Agra, begging business, child prostitution and last but the least our call centres. The entire story ahs been weaved in the background of Who wants to be millionaire?, which could be easily be replaced to winning a lottery to show a rags-to-riches story.