Slumdog Millionaire's Bollywood Ancestors
Slumdog Millionaire has a pedigree. Its director, Danny Boyle, says there are at least three Bollywood films that inspired him directly. Those films were themselves influenced by a long family tree that stretches back to the last days of the nineteenth century.
Here, then, is a list of Slumdog’s ten most flamboyant and influential Bollywood ancestors:
Black Friday (2004). This film, by young director Anurag Kashyap depicts the March 1993 bomb blasts that tore apart Bombay (as Mumbai used to be called). It was based on a book by journalist S. Hussain Zaidi and filmed in an edgy, realistic style. A famous sequence from the film, a 12-minute police chase through the crowded Dharavi slum, is mimicked by Danny Boyle in the opening scene of Slumdog Millionaire, where truant slum-kids take the place of Black Friday’s militants.
Satya (1998) a.k.a The Truth. This film was also cited by Boyle as an inspiration, as was The Company (2002). Both offer slick, often mesmerizing portrayals of the Mumbai underworld. Both films were directed by Ram Gopal Varma, a director with a fine taste for brutality and urban violence. The screenplay for Satya was co-written by Saurabh Shukla (who plays a policeman named Srinivas in Slumdog Millionaire) and Anurag Kashyap, who directed Black Friday; with its intense rhythm and captivating performances, Satya instantly became a contemporary classic in India.
Deewaar (1975) a.ka. The Wall. Boyle describes this melodramatic film as being “absolutely key to Indian cinema.” He could be talking about scores of Bollywood films. Based in Bombay, the hit crime film pits a policeman against his brother, a gang leader based on real-life smuggler Haji Mastan. The actor who played the gangster, was Amitabh Bachchan (who, incidentally, was the original host of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? As a kid, Jamal, the protagonist in Slumdog Millionaire,wades through fecal waste just to get Bachchan’s autograph.
Parinda (1989) a.k.a. The Bird. Another hugely popular thriller about two very different brothers, this time a Bombay gangster and an educated idealist. Film critics gush over the “low-angle tracking shots and swiftly changing volumes in the image” in this film by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The actor playing the straight-and-narrow brother, Anil Kapoor, now nearly two decades later, plays the creepy, condescending game-show host in Slumdog Millionaire.
Shri 420 (1955) a.k.a. Mr. 420. One of the series of films made by Bollywood’s Chaplinesque showman, Raj Kapoor, playing on the image of the tramp. Shri 420 reprises the theme of innocence adrift on the mean streets of Bombay. While Jamal’s connection to the wider world in Slumdog Millionaire comes through his job serving tea at an international call-center, the hero of Shri 420 explains his brand of worldliness through this song: “My shoes are Japanese / My trousers are English / The red cap on my head is Russian / But, for all that, my heart remains Indian.”
Devdas (1928, 1935, 1936, 1937, 1953, 1955, 1979, 2002). Devdas was the protagonist of a 1917 Bengali novel that told the story of a young man’s love for his childhood friend, Paro. When the two are not allowed to marry, Devdas goes away to Calcutta and falls in love with a beautiful dancer, Chandramukhi. The love that Devdas and Paro have for each other remains alive but unfulfilled. When Boyle talks of the Bollywood motif of “eternal love” and of “everlasting love that’s pure” he could be describing nearly all Hindi films, but Devdas is the best-known example. The latest adaptation of the novel, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, is the most spectacular of all of them. Love born during the days of childhood, like that between Jamal and Latika in Slumdog Millionaire, remains a beacon through life’s turbulent passage—and through countless, and often stunningly beautiful, song and dance sequences.
Bandit Queen (1994). Director Shekhar Kapur’s intelligent film about real-life bandit Phoolan Devi, a low-caste woman who became a member of the Indian parliament, prefigured Boyle’s interest the slums. Bandit Queen is more realistic than Slumdog Millionaire, and represents a break from Bollywood in its refusal to provide easy redemption. This branch of the Indian film family is an offshoot of new wave Hindi cinema associated with venerable names like Shyam Benegal (Ankur, Nishant) and Govind Nihalani (Aakrosh, Ardha Satya), names that are almost pushed aside by the new generation of glitzy, glamorous film-makers like Sanjay Leela Bhansali and even, now, Danny Boyle.
Monsoon Wedding (2001). Made by New York-based Indian director Mira Nair, and financed by companies outside India, this isn’t technically a Bollywood film. But Sabrina Dhawan’s screenplay about a Punjabi wedding in New Delhi reveals an authentic sensibility that beautifully captures the emotional undercurrents of modern life in urban India. Like Slumdog Millionaire, Monsoon Wedding has a novel, captivating soundtrack that combines Bollywood tradition with innovative sounds.
Guide (1965). Any film made about India for the Western viewer needs to have the obligatory shot of the Taj Mahal in Agra. In Slumdog Millionaire, our hero Jamal ends up there, accidentally becoming a tour guide at the famous monument. Boyle borrows this idea from Vikas Swarup’s novel, Q&A, on which the film is loosely based. Swarup has the accidental tour guide take on a new name, Raju, an obvious homage to the hero of Vijay Anand’s popular 1960s film
Maqbool (2003). Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool is a brilliant adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set in Mumbai’s underworld. Irrfan Khan, the actor with insomniac eyes who plays Maqbool also appears in Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire as the police interrogator. In its sensitive portrayal of corruption—the way in which ambition and illicit desire can hollow out honesty—the film achieves devastating power. This is Bollywood at its best.
No comments:
Post a Comment