Movie review: Slumdog Millionaire

Every time I visit London I make sure I go to movies. Back at home we still have only one up to date cinema with London priced tickets and Russian dubbed movies…Lately I don’t even mind going to a movie alone, something that would seem weird to me before due to prejudices of youth…not any more. All I need is a movie and maybe a coke. Is this considered an advertisement? Well, don’t drink it. Its bad for your health. Does it balance now? :) Of course when possible I prefer going especially to romantic movies with my spouse who actually prefers fantasy and doesn’t like “girlie” movies at all but does not want me to go to cinema alone and would prefer coming along and “suffering” through the whole movie…Something to do with Azeri mentality that I don’t mind in this case actually :)

During my last trip I watched “Changeling” that left me paranoid and depressed for quite a while therefore this time it had to be something positive. I knew that I wanted to see “Slumdog Millionaire”. So I did…
Those who know me and saw the movie might have already guessed that I have wept the whole movie. It made me laugh too but mostly stroke again with discoveries about human cruelty and again cruelty, arrogance, ignorance and love, love, love :)

I have a dilemma. How do I bring up a child teaching him to trust and love people and at the same time not to believe to all he meets, sees and hears…

The movie is about real horrors that we know that exist but we don’t want to face/think/notice…one of the reasons being that we cant really change much about many things in life and prefer to be isolated in our own comfort zone…nowadays even sometimes getting extreme in this isolation…The movie proved once more Madagascar's King Julien's saying that some or many people think that “nothing personal but they are better than others” and what wise mentor tortoise from Kung Fu Panda used to say that “accidents are not accidental”…Actually destiny or as we call it here “qismət” is quite strong in traditions, culture and beliefs in Azerbaijan. Therefore main character’s often said “its destiny” is very understandable to me.

Older generations in Azerbaijan as anywhere else in former USSR grew with Indian movies. I wonder if this played some role in their maturing to kind and loving people. Indian movies always have a good ending, at least they used to, evil never wins, however it tries and happiness and love are constant winners. Another thing so comfortable about Indian movies is that they do not have intimate scenes which makes life of any Azeri family easier as usually men and women, brothers and sisters or different generations watch movies together and are able to watch the movie uninterruptedly without switching the channels for a while with guessed timing to go back to watching the movie or girls suddenly going to bring tea or starting to talk to each other etc – all these awkward things happening during intimate scenes of other movies, since mentality and tradition still do not “allow” watching all this collectively…

I wonder if we in my country would be once as brave and confident as those who shot “Slumdog Millionaire” to expose the issues of our country. I am not sure if we can afford it currently though. My wishful thinking hopes that maybe by the time we would afford it we won’t have those issues any longer…

Any Indian movie has dance in its script, many dances. It was great to see that movie makers did not compromise on this tradition and had it even so at the end of the movie when the story was over. I envied movie makers chance to capture so many issues in one movie speaking to the whole world at once. Bravo.

The movie brought big picture back to me, distancing me from annoying little nuisances of life reminding to be grateful, positive and loving no matter what I see or what I hear.

P.S. Edited and shortened version of the article here.

P.P.S. Today (22.02.2009) Slumdog Millionaire got an Oscar. Bravo!! Well deserved!! Congratulations to everyone in the team!! :)