Film recommendation - Slumdog Millionaire

Sometimes, you watch a film (or movie, as they'd say here) that is so incredibly good and has such an impact on your senses and emotions, it stays with you long after you have left the cinema. Slumdog Millionaire is one of those movies. If you haven't watched it yet, you must! It is, for me, the best film of 2008. Unfortunately, I don't think it is the sort of film that will appeal to the masses, so it probably won't do all that well in terms of ticket sales, but I hope it makes enough that the producer, directors and actors will know their film had the sort of impact few movies do.

If you cut down to the very core, I suppose you could say this is a love story, but it is so much more than that. The premise itself is an interesting one - a boy from the slums of Mumbai/Bombay gets onto the Who Wants To Be a Millionaire TV show and gets answer after answer correct. What makes the film so good is the way he keeps flashing back to past events in his life to show why he knows almost all the answers. A lot of these "flashback" movies are jarring and sometimes weak in the way the past is revealed, but this one was so well done that the constant jumping from past to present and back to the past again was seamless and superb.

Gutwrenching, disturbing, painful at times because of what happens to the brothers and the girl in this tale, accentuated by scenes that so accurately and painfully depict what some children in India go through, the film still manages to be heartwarming and moving. It is everything a story should be - you, along with the "Millionaire" audience, want the "hero" to win. There was no yawning, no drumming of fingers waiting for the pace to pick up again or looking at timepieces to see how much time remains (as someone who shall remain nameless does sometimes during lesser movies ...) We were captivated from the beginning and completely involved in the telling of the tale.

The music by A.R. Rahman was excellent, as always, especially during the closing credits, when I was dancing in my seat. The final scene, a dance in a train station, was a fun Bollywood tribute and ended an emotionally wrenching movie on just the right note.

Go watch this film. You must, you must! Telling people about it is the only way I can think of to pay tribute to those who made it, in a day when there is so much mindless nonsense and crude rubbish in the cinema. This film is, to me, what cinematic art is about.