Report: Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire.
Why, everyone should see Slumdog Millionaire. It’s a cross between Oliver Twist (book and any movie version) and WALL-E. Other lead characters: Fagin, Artful Dodger and Eve. The plot: fish-out-of-water-into-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire.
(Shouldn’t reviews now and then be as short as possible? Complete write-ups, not capsules)
In short, this is the best best-movie I’ve seen in several years. Consider recent Best Picture Oscars, beginning with last year’s: No Country for Old Men, The Departed, Crash, Million Dollar Baby, Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Chicago, A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, and to start the decade, 2000’s American Beauty (from 1999, in the nature of awards). Crash and Chicago don’t need to be on the list, though good shows, but the others at the least typify their years, some accomplish much more.
Slumdog belongs in this crowd. (My Beloved liked it OK but prefers The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.) Slumdog is a complete movie, with every element right: the photography is precise for the scene (close-ups, panoramic, jiggly hand-cam etc.) the music enhances and doesn’t detract, the directing of the flow of the story is clockwork. In performance, it’s an ensemble work, not star-driven. The acting is competent; none stands out, surely director Boyle’s intent. What should be a flaw doesn’t matter: predictability and employment of movie conventions. Will boy get girl? Guess in first half-hour the character who dies in the last reel? Well. … Here is a fable, and fables by definition employ familiar devices. When done right, their magic is in the execution.
This leads straight into the best quote I’ve seen in days, Igor Stravinky quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in a Jan. 26, 2009, New Yorker article about George Balanchine:
Everything has been thought of before; the task is to think of it again.”
