Slumdog Millionaire
Dec. 28th, 2008 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ionelvYesterday, we saw Slumdog Millionaire (which won a People's Choice Award at TIFF 2008 and other prizes). The movie was impressive in its blending of slum life with the lives of average Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?-watching crowd. It blended a very glossy Hollywood cinematographic style with a Bollywood cast, setting and storyline. Without getting into details, the ending was again a Holly-Bolly blend.
The film was based on a novel, Q & A by Vikas Swarup. The book reviews are a mix, but they strongly imply that the movie rewrote a lot of the book starting with the main character. In the book, he was raised by a priest who named him Ram Mohammad Thomas (meaning Supreme Praiseworthy Twin, a name that has deeply religious undertones in three major religions), a lot more interesting name than Jamal Malik (meaning Beautiful King, an ordinary name by comparison). The Chamb Battle of 1971 is not mentioned in the movie. Another major change is that Jamal is an angel compared to a flawed cruder Ram. Here is an excerpt chapter from the publisher. So, the producers massaged the religious hints, cleaned up the local contentious historical references and the main character. That's probably par for the course in Hollywood. Up and at 'em, boys!
The film was based on a novel, Q & A by Vikas Swarup. The book reviews are a mix, but they strongly imply that the movie rewrote a lot of the book starting with the main character. In the book, he was raised by a priest who named him Ram Mohammad Thomas (meaning Supreme Praiseworthy Twin, a name that has deeply religious undertones in three major religions), a lot more interesting name than Jamal Malik (meaning Beautiful King, an ordinary name by comparison). The Chamb Battle of 1971 is not mentioned in the movie. Another major change is that Jamal is an angel compared to a flawed cruder Ram. Here is an excerpt chapter from the publisher. So, the producers massaged the religious hints, cleaned up the local contentious historical references and the main character. That's probably par for the course in Hollywood. Up and at 'em, boys!
