At the outset let me apologise to akshay kumar and nikhil advani…i had spoken too soon…i hadn’t seen slumdog yet…i stand corrected. If slumdog can be nominated for 10 oscars and wins 8…then akshay and nikhil deserved at least 8 nominations and 5 wins. Because the difference between slumdog and chandni chowk is a mere unnees bees as they say…whereas the difference between benjamin button and slumdog is the difference between heaven and hell.
But why am i hellbent on playing party pooper? Why am i not celebrating the success of slumdog like every other indian? (actually every other indian is not too happy with the Academy’s poor choice)
Sure Rehman deserved to win an Oscar. But for this? wouldn’t winning for Bombay, RDB been better of?
Here are fifteen disturbing questions that arose in my mind after watching the cinematic hoax of the year. And if you think 15 questions is a convenient trick becaue we are talking about the format of kaun banega corepati…you are damn right…i am using the contrived and convenient tricks used by my friend Boyle and Beaufoy…(the B connection is striking – with all the black swan stuff going around these days turning out starting from B – barrack obama, balika badhu, bidaai – I am tempted to boom all titles starting with B) or is convenience and connivance only reserved for white folk? (please note the questions are far less disturbing than the answers)
1. Why does amitabh bachchan land his helicopter in the slums and pray why the child dives into a pot of shit to get to him and finally why would mr.bachchan shake the hand of a kid steeped in shit?
Answer: mr.boyle is obsessed with shit and has used this device in the past but he is using the shitpot as a metaphor for the cinema and culture of india of which mr.bachchan is the biggest icon…his subtext is that to get to bachchan you have to be covered in shit…still doesn’t uncover why mr.bachchan would land his helicopter in the middle of a slum. Why this scene at all…because mr.bachchan refused to do the film and rightly so? For some strange reason khalid mohammed who rips apart far better hindi cinema… thought this scene was cute. A little boy falling into a pot of shit amuses mr.boyle and mr. Mohammed. What can be more telling?
2. Why is the kid from the slum not actually smart or intelligent to be able to answser the questions? How come all the questions seem to be contrived to suit the boy’s past experience. If he doesn’t know whose picture is on a 500 rupee note….how can he know whose picture is on a dollar note?
Answer: whatever is convenient is fine by mr.boyle. The kid is shown earning money doing all kinds of things…but he seems to have never seen a 500 rupee note. If this kind of thing was done in a hindi film…the critics would have shredded it on day one. Apparently white directors can do whatever they like…because they give themselves the oscar. Also by not making the kid actually a smart boy they have reinforced the prejudice that a slumdog can only become a millionnaire by chance (it is written they say) and not by merit. (i suspect the wrote the future of their film also, i sniff it’s written all over the slumdog oscar win – and it’s not fate i am talking about – i refer to a less ingenuous idea called Fixing. A certain white man called Hansie Crinje was quite adept at creating it’s written wins for others)
3. A litlte tangential this one. But we have come to a crucial question. Why wouldn’t elizabeth by shekhar kapur win more gloden globes and oscars?
Answer: a brown man going and making a white man’s film is not okay at all. But a white man making a c grade hindi potboiler is a genius. If slumdog and mr.boyle get any awards…shouldn’t manmohan desai get a lifetime achievement award posthumously at least. Mr. Boyle’s sad little train sequence of the boy stealing paratha from the roof was right out of a MKD film. Only with far less chutzpah. Apprently white men find such things uncomfortably melodramatic…and so mr.boyle’s heart was not in the sequence perhaps?
4. Can riots happen where people are butchered on the road but others simply carry on with their daily business as if nothing happened? Won’t everyone run when others are being killed? Won’t streets be empty?
Ans: in mr.boyle’s twisted india, hindus are slaughtering muslims (no muslim is shown slaughtering hindus…for perspective and fairness, also note how the Hindu-Muslim-Christian name of the protagonist in the book is changed to a pure muslim name in the film) next to a road, where people are simply walking as if they are zombies..they are not even acknowledging the murders right next to them. And suddenly in the middle of mayhem…a little boy appears dressed as Ram. And he is all blue like Krishna. He has a bow and arrow also. Real or surreal…Boyle is steeped in double standard. He shows Indians to be ruthless and without compassion…which is odd considering he is British and we suffered their ruthlessness for more than 100 years and finally when we threw them out…we did it with so much compassion that not a single life was lost. It is easy for Mr.Boyle to paint an entire nation heartless with that one shot.
15. Ah, where are question no.s 5 to 10? I have jumped them just like Mr.Boyle did in his film. If all the questions are connected to the slumdog’s life then how did he manage to answer the questions that Mr. boyle skipped? Anyway, this one is the most sickening. It is shown that if you park a mercedes outside the taj mahal…all its tyres etc will be stolen. And then a kid is suspected to be responsible and severely beaten up…while he is beaten up…the kid says…this is the real india…what? Are we a nation of child beaters and thieves? What does Mr.Boyle mean? This is the real india? And worse the white woman in the scene then encourages her white husband to show the real america…the man proceeds to protect the poor boy and offers him money….what? The real america protects the poor third world denizens with charity? No wonder americans want to reward mr. Boyle with 10 oscars.
I can go on and on, a childishly simlistic screenplay. Amateurish camera angles. Blatantly unreal sitations like a laughter track in KBC…where the host keeps laughing sarcastically at his guest contestant and where the audience laughs along cruelly at each jibe. The-host appears to be a pathologically insane paranoid creatuire who deliberately wants to stop the boy from winning. Why? What’s his problem? Why would any host do something like that? I have been part of the TV industry in India for 16 years and made a show like Movers & Shakers which featured a pretty mean and sarcastic Host but never seen a Host who is jealous of his guests.
Why does the elder brother kill himself at the end of the movie instead of running away? He has every iopportunity to do so but doesn’t. Why does he cover himslef with currency notes…before shooting himself? Because mr.boyle wanted a kiddish metaphor? which was used far better by the Bhatts in Jannat?
Why does mr. Boyle shy away from showing white men involved in the child prostitution in mumbai? After all it was one Briton Duncan Grant who has been the face of child prostitution and paedophilia in India. If he wanted t show the underbelly this was unavoidable considering the kind of beggar gang he was dealing with.
Why would the police arrest a boy just on the recommendation of a host instead of the entire channel. The whole arrest scene is totally not believable. And why would they give him electric shocks and then release him immediately the next day? I know the Mumbai police is not the best. But surely they are not insane and idiotic.
Why would the boy know william colt invented the revolver because his brother used a colt to shoot someone. It could have been a wesson as given in the option. Not to mention the song attributed to soordas which is actually a gopal singh nepali lyric – why would a man who blinds kids make them singh darshan do ghanshyam…how schoolkid like can a man think?
Why would a white american couple ask a kid to be their taj mahal guide. And then why would they accept the kid’s stupid crap about taj mahal was built to be a 5 star hotel. In the 17th century? What kind of literacy do they have in america that they fall for this kind of nonsense?
My point is not that they shouldn’t give 10 or 100 oscars to this film or that. The point is: we as indians shouldn’t jump with joy at this shitty film getting any awards. This is not an indian film. It is a white man’s film that exploits our weaknesses mercilessly and makes it look as if all we are is our weaknesses. And with the media going ga ga like this… An entire generation of young impressionable indians might be misled to believe Mr.Boyle’s version is true.
This piece is written to be the counterpoint to the propaganda called Slumdog Milionnaire. it’s a hoax. let’s call the bluff. Mr.boyle it’s time you go home and my 1 billion fellow countrymen…it’s time you wake up and realise we have all been conned.
I suggest we hold our own International Awards as the Oscars have lost all sanctity by nominating this piece of crap for not one but 10 oscars and then awarding it 8. Why should the white man be the sole judge of excellence for world cinema?
Lastly I feel terribly sorry for the team of Benjamin Button : it’s one of the finest films ever. and it lost to one of the worst films ever. It’s the Zeitgist at work folks. It is exposing us to the contradictions of our civilization.
Watch :
1. Barrack Obama wins the election on the plank of CHANGE. then he keeps Bush’s Defence secretary because he wants CONTINUITY. would he have won if he had indicated he would do this?
2. Citibank gets 45 Billion in bailout and proceeds to buy a Jet for its top executives. why would the people want to give their tax monies to Big Business? and why did people elect Obama to give bigger handouts to the corporates? Wouldn’t Bush or his cronies have qualified?
3. Closer home why do we find a serial on child marriage to be cute? and popular? what’s happened to our common sense?
4. Why do normal citizens demand more draconian laws to fight terror. won’t they be the victims of those laws?
5. Who are these people who love the army? isn’t it time to get rid of armies everywhere?
6. Why do people applaud the government takeover of satyam? would you like your property taken over by someone without proving your crime?
These are just a few examples – the list is long. and we live in interesting times. which will only get more and more curious.
so no problem if curious case of benjamin button doesn’t win now. F Scott Fitzegerald will triumph in the basurdities to range the earth between now and 2021 – the anniversary of this short story on which the Great film is based on.
May The Galactic Spirit heal our corrupted minds.