Sunday, March 08, 2009

Two Quick Points About Slumdog Millionaire

  • It's good. Very, very good. But I can't add a lot to standard reviews so I won't try.
  • But one thing I suppose nobody else is likely to dwell on. I have never (on film) seen an alpha male treat his lady with such proprietary contempt as you get from Mahesh Manjrekar playing the thuggish Javed. No, wait, I have seen it once before: in the other great Bombay movie, Salaam Bombay. Coincidence? Maybe. I'm certainly not saying there is anything specially Indian in proprietary contempt: I am sure it happens the world over. Maybe it's something in Indian movie making.
Update--Well, That Too: "...manages to be at once garish, extremely violent, gaggingly photogenic, too loud, sentimental and exploitative." Malcolm Ross on the "Letters" page of the London Review of Books, 26 February 2009.

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