Tag Archives: Slumdog Millionaire

Dear Hollywood, Could you please STOP ‘Lionizing’ India!

by WordPress | Leave a comment

First things first; let’s say a small prayer to whatever powers that be — up there and down under — that Lion didn’t win any ‘Oscars’ at the 89th Academy Awards. The Dev Patel starrer had been nominated for 5 of them, namely, Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Music, Best Writing, and Best Cinematography. Thankfully it won none.

Had this movie won any awards at the Academy Awards, we would have been badgered with “Indian-ness”, despite the fact that the movie is produced by a foreign studio, directed and helmed by a foreign crew and even the actors (except for a few tit-bits and the chief protagonist) are all foreigners.Lion_film_India_1

Yet, the foreign DNA of the film is not why I wish the film the failed, there’s no pseudo nationalism at work. The reason, I harbour such feelings is, because undoubtedly Lion is a much below-par movie. The whole excitement around it has taken me by surprise. Built largely on the Slumdog Millionaire construct, Lion is purported to be a true-story. Sadly it is little else but a stereotypical production that lacks empathy or understanding on the topic or the people that it portrays.

Ostensibly, Lion is a tale of a 7-year-old boy named Saroo as he gets separated from his family and brother, travels some 1200 kms unknowingly across India before landing in Kolkata, and is finally adopted by a set of parents in Tasmania, Australia. After a gap of 25 years, Saroo Brierley traces back his past on Google Earth and reunites with his family. This is an epic journey that has its bearings in truth.

In real life, Saroo retraced his steps in the sleepy town of Khandwa in 2012, and his story was well covered by the media at large, from BBC to Times of India, everyone featured this extraordinary human tale of emotions and resolution.

Now, as any astute person, Saroo decided to cash on the new-found fame and he quickly penned a book on his own journey, ‘A Long Way Home’. The book was published in 2013, and by 2016, Lion was released. It was all done in a jiffy, so as to speak.

While I have yet to read the book, I did watch the film and it really stuck me as another Schadenfreude Millionaire tale that had appeared on screen some years back. What essentially befuddles me is the manner in which India is still portrayed especially by international film-makers; a shoddy, poor, dirty, degraded place where crime and criminals abound. Continue reading …

Schadenfreude Millionaire

by Shashwat DC | 1 Comment

It’s evening time at the posh Lincoln Plaza Cinema, in Broadway, New York an Amy Wilder is sitting perked up and looking with disbelief at the film running on the big screen ahead. Though, she has never really visited India, but has heard a lot about the country especially due to the job losses in the US. Like many else she believes that every white-collared IT worker that is retrenched in US is replaced by a brownie in some obscure city of India. Over the years, Amy, and many like her, have come to believe that India is no merely a land of elephants, snake charmers and the rope trick artists, but a potent threat to the workforce because of its laborious and educated workforce. The stereotype had steadily been effaced.

Yet, sitting in the Lincoln Cinema, she witnessed an image of India that she has often heard about but was not sure that it existed; an impoverished country wherein people were reduced to despondency, fighting, bickering, cheating, and killing each other. Thanks to the ‘Incredible India’ buses that flitted on the Broadway Street, her image of India as a third-world country had been replaced by that of an emergent and mystical land, the country of IT and that of the Taj Mahal. But Slumdog Millionaire got her thinking again

Seeing the two little orphans scampering across the cramped and filthy streets of Mumbai made her realize that India was not really a country that should be loathed, but rather pitied. In fact, on coming out of the theatre, Amy felt better about her existence, even though she was facing tough times in the face of job loses and defaults on mortgage payments, but at least it wasn’t as bad as in India, where small boys were blinded and made to beg on streets, or mobs of religious fanatics went about killing people just like that. Thank you lord for not making me an Indian, she heaved a sigh. Continue reading …