With a lot of hope and expectation, I finally caught the morning show of 'Slumdog Millionaire' yesterday. It was certainly worth a watch, primarily because of the performances. The supporting child cast was even better than the adult actors. The boy who played the role of the teenaged Salim, the protagonist's brother, was awesome. In fact, the character of Salim was what kept me so engrossed and I thought that Salim was responsible for carrying the story forward. Although Dev Patel ,who plays role of the protagonist ,could have acted better, I did not care because his looks and smile bowled me over. I specially liked him when he smiled widely on seeing the final question.
I don't know whether the movie should win an Oscar or not but I definitely don't want A.R. Rahman to win an Oscar for this one. He has composed better music before. Besides, the ending of the movie was like any other Hindi movie. After arresting him, when the protagonist narrated how he had answered the questions, how did the police know that he was speaking the truth? Why did they let him off so easily in the end after even giving him electric shocks? But, I don't think that anybody has commited a grave mistake by portraying India's poverty because it is the harsh truth. Each of the things shown in the movie exist in this country. The country's people should not expect foreign film makers to ignore them sweetly, specially when those film makers know what sort of profits they can derive by making a movie which deals with India's miserable condition.
On a different and more cheerful note, I also went to the Kolkata Book Fair yesterday. I totally got lost in the world of books and for myself, I got a collection of all short stories written by Guy De Maupassant. The book includes more than 150 stories! I also got a collection of stories by R.L.Stevenson and 'The White Tiger' by Aravind Adiga. Besides, my parents bought books for themselves and after spending nearly four hours at the fair, they realized that they had just enough money left to pay the taxi fare. They realized that just in time though, because we were thinking of looking around a bit more for some other books!
