I suspect that most people who consume a great deal of written and podcasted material on current cinema face the same dilemma I do: knowing when to stop reading or listening so as not to ruin the eventual experience of a film or cloud my independent experience or judgment. Before seeing Slumdog Millionaire, I thought surely I had heard too many Danny Boyle interviews for the experience of the film to be fresh. I was wrong. Most of the press attention attention to Slumdog focuses on how the now Oscar frontrunner nearly lost its US distribution, or how unlikely the film’s broad success is, considering that the most recognizable actor, to western audiences, is Irrfan Khan (The Namesake, The Darjeeling Limited). The characters that inhabit this film are on the one hand insignificantly small (as is everyone in Mumbai, apparently) and yet the story takes on an epic quality, a phenomenon that is surely a big reason for the film’s popularity. I only hope that the film isn’t crushed under the weight of the attention it is receiving, because it deserves to inhabit a smaller space, to be seen as an outsider to the mechanics of Hollywood and appreciated for its relative audacity. Much like its hero, Jamal, this film isn’t in it for the fame and glory.
Slumdog Millionaire
February 2nd, 2009 · No Comments
Tags: Capsule · Drama · Foreign Language · Romance
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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