Our film? Or theirs? The question has steadily been gathering steam since Slumdog Millionaire released late last year to hosannahs in the US and the UK. It has now burst forth, propelled by the clutch of Oscar nominations the film has collected.
The Oscars are a distant peak we keep trying to scale, and fall off, either from afar, or from up close. Sure, Bhanu Athaiya got one, but that was back in the dark ages. So did grandmaster Satyajit Ray, but seriously after the fact. Mira Nair got within sniffing distance. Lately, we've had only one serious stab at it, when Aamir Khan nearly went up that stage at the Kodak stadium, for Lagaan. Nothing else we've sent, and we do it doggedly every year, has even come close to getting into the last five.
A certain amount of breast-beating is de rigeur, and we indulge in it every year, post the nominations, when we come up empty. Oscars, shoscars. Rubbish. Why should we run after awards created by Americans, for Americans? We're doing fine, thank you. Look at us, after all this time, Hollywood has only 6 per cent of our total market. Only.
But the ten nominations Slumdog Millionaire received have blown us out in the open again. The drumbeats have begun. Now it's not a question of will it, but of how many of those golden statuettes it will get. But the big, big question, which even Jamal Malik, the young slumdog in the hotseat in the film, would have hesitated at, remains: ours, or theirs? Indian or British?
Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, Christian Colson, the director-screenwriter-producer troika, is British. Some of the crew is, too. Eighteen-year-old Dev Patel, who is at the pulsating heart of the film, is both - he's Indian of British origin. Everyone else, cast and crew, is Indian. Anil Kapoor is still a Bollywood A-lister, and now his profile will be bigger than the Khans - Shah Rukh nixed the role - on a global platform. Irrfan Khan and Saurabh Shukla are among our finest performers. And Resul Pookutty, who's a magician with sound, and A.R. Rahman, who changed the way Indian cinema made music, are ours, ours, ours.
Make no mistake, even if the sea of faces holding aloft the Slumdog Oscars in the first week of March is predominantly white - it's got nods for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, among others - with Rahman and Resul the only Indians, as the former looks like a shoo-in for the score if not for his two songs, the film is, at its core, as desi as can be. Because it's a British production, the film has jumped right into the middle of the main awards (no hanging about on the periphery, in the foreign film category). But it's there because India, to borrow the phrase of one of its characters, is at the centre, of its centre.
One-third of it is, fittingly, in Hindi. Casting director, and subsequently co-director Loveleen Tandon made the point that you can't have Indian slum-kids talking only in English. Wisely, both her director and screenplay writer read her lips. When we listen to Jamal and Latika and Salim, we hear Hindi, which is what we expect. And when we do begin to hear the English, it's all fine. Because we've segued into the language, all of us. Even slumdogs are allowed to speak Angrezi in today's India.
The story is universal, but it could only have been made in Mumbai. The sights are ours - the ragged roofs of the largest shanty-town in Asia spread below us, and the twisted, narrow lanes of those slums. The sounds are ours - the slumdog's lost girl-friend in a 'kotha' dancing to an effete dancemaster's tune, 'Ringa Ringa', is fabulously Rahman. The conventions we've long associated with Bollywood potboilers are all there - lost-and-found brothers, a brief-lasting but ever-loving mother, the good guys and the bad ones. Heck, there's even an item song, right at the end, like all good self-respecting Bollywood flicks.
But it's Indian in a much more crucial way. In the way it waves the flag for emotion. In the way it upholds warm feelings over form. In the way it trumps commerce, and holds aloft romance. Slumdog Jamal tells the inspector who's just finished shocking him that he's not in it for the millions. He only entered the game show in the hope that he will find his lost love. This is a dilwala who will go to any lengths to get back his dulhaniya. That is ours, always ours.
CAclubindia
