If you were to believe the buzz on the web and magazines, it is that Danny Boyle has made his ultimate masterpiece with this movie and is expected to do very well at the big movie award shows. Setting his latest movie surprisingly in India, it is difficult not to like the imagery as India is the place on earth that attacks the senses on all levels. When watching the movie, all the intensity and splendour I experienced when I visited this country some eight years ago, comes rushing back in as Boyle succeeds in harnessing the raw energy this place holds. Maybe only Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited and Tarsem Singh’s The Fall surpasses this as far as ‘beatification’ of the Indian scenery goes. Then again, that may not be a fair comparison as Tarsem Singh’s sole purpose in life seems to be shooting magnificent imagery for our viewing pleasure. Boyle on the other hands does not shy away to also show us the dirty and gritty reality of India next to its splendour, and it is this juxtaposition of images that gives a more truthful picture and a surprising backdrop for a romantic story.

We follow Indian ‘slumdog’ Jamal Malik who has survived the worst of the harsh Indian slums of Mumbai (previously Bombay). We see him with his brother Salim and the girl Latika they adopted to finally end up at an unlikely place: the hotseat of the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”. When Jamal is progressing unexpectedly to the final rounds, he is ‘questioned’ by the police on suspicion of cheating on the show. The police has difficulty believing that a boy from the streets can progress so far without cheating and he has to explain how he got the right answers to the questions. It then seems that every answer he has given is tied to a particular event of his rough life on the streets and the people he met. Throughout the story we see his difficult relationship with his brother – who has an opportunistic and self-destructive side – and the angelic homeless girl Latika to whom Jamal loses his heart from the moment he meets her. As this unlikely contestant progresses further in the popular show, the public picks up on this ‘rags to riches’ story and he becomes somewhat of a national hero.

The story is told throughout the early youth of Jamal up to his young adulthood in Mumbai and Agra and shows the brutal and gritty reality of India’s poor people and their abandoned children. Although the imagery it stunning, the cruelty these children of the lowest caste have to face is difficult to stomach. In this respect, it is obvious that this movie shares many similarities with the equally brilliant and unsettling Cidade de Deus. It is here that I found that this first part of the movie clashes just a bit too much with the second part, where we see Jamal trying to win the love of his life by ultimately participating in the game show. Others might say that this is “the tarmac that makes the beauty of the lonely rose stand out more” and that the harshness of the first part gives dramatic depth to the love story, but that is only when you have not been pummeled to the ground by the initial brutal reality check. Then again, it is this contrast that makes the movie ultimately palatable and it is then that I remembered that this duality is the spirit of India and why I fell in love with it in the first place.

That said, the lingering after-taste I still had may be the character of Jamal who is so pure of heart that you wonder how he survived this hell on earth in the first place and whether he is not too big of a dissonant with the harsh reality. Boyle does point to some of the difficulties the disfavoured people of India have to endure as we see religiously biased violence and the hidden ugliness of the caste system, but nowhere does he try to explain or justify his use of these elements. When considering that this is ultimately a love story, I was again left puzzled as to which message Boyle was really trying to convey. It is this contradiction that keeps me from calling it a masterpiece and instead hail it as an impressive and very well-made movie.