terça-feira, 17 de fevereiro de 2009

First movie; Slumdog Millionaire

Yesterday, I saw the first movie that I feel deserves to be mentioned here: "Slumdog Millionaire" by Danny Boyle (the same guy that did Trainspotting, one of my favorite movies).

The movie is about a kid (Jamal) who comes from the slums in Mumbai and we find him a question away from winning 20 million rupees (around 300 000 Euros) in the show “Who wants to be a Millionaire”. Since the show stopped for one night (to be continued the following day), we see him being interrogated by the police who is suspicious of this wonderful performance from an illiterate kid. So, great part of the movie is a depiction of the explanation that Jamal gives to the police as a justification to know all the answers. And basically he describes several episodes of his life that seemed to prepare him for each question of the show, as if everything was written and everything was meant to be.

As I have read from a movie critic: “At this point, you are left with a choice. You can let the cynic in you take over and sneer at the sheer contrivance and the crazy coincidences that hold the story together, which should keep you from developing any kind of emotional investment.(…) Or you can try to overlook that and ride along

Once you take the latter road, you will be able to enjoy the magnificent cinematography, the contagious soundtrack and the great acting.

One thing that amazed me about the movie and pertains to what I felt about the acting (and maybe the filming in general) is that I saw the movie here in the Netherlands with Dutch subtitles and about 20% of the movie is in Hindi and nevertheless I never felt like I wasn’t aware of what was going on.

So, since I was able to suspend a cynical perspective and I ignored the predictability of the ending, I enjoyed a great movie, hopefully the first of many to come during this post doc.

I will try to watch all the movies nominated for Best Picture before the Oscars (Sunday). I already saw this one, "Frost/Nixon" and “The curious case of Benjamin Button. I still have to go see “Milk” and “The reader”.

Though I have enjoyed all three, I must say that Slumdog takes the cake.

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