Mumbai Story

I don't want to drop any spoilers for Slumdog Millionaire, but since seeing it last night there's a scene I can't shake that I think gives the movie it's ultimate street cred. This is essentially a very modern Frank Capra movie set in the Mumbai section of Bombay, India, and it's amazing that the movie has come out almost simultaneously with the coordinated assault that killed so many people there last week. The main characters in the movie are, as young children, victims of anti-Muslim violence which leads to their harrowing lives on the streets. Not incidentally, the terrorists who attacked last week claimed to be doing so in retaliation for the pain inflicted by the Hindu majority on their people.

Capra gets a bit maligned for being "corny" but it's his imitators more than the man himself who have tarnished his reputation by not earning their sentiment. There's an argument to be made of a certain commercial calculation in Slumdog Millionaire, but I think the powerful depiction of poverty and indictment of those who inflict cruelty on those less powerful more than balances any of the uplift. And the movie is colorful, jammed full of youthful energy, and musically propulsive, with the best end credit sequence in memory.

This is director Danny Boyle's masterpiece (yes, better even than Trainspotting), from a script by Simon Beaufoy (who wrote The Full Monty) this from an Indian novel source. It's using a certain amount of audience pleasing storytelling to bring the more desperate, urgent vision to our multiplexes.

The National Board of Review just named it their best picture of the year. Looks like the one to beat for the big Oscar at the end of the line.