Slumdog Millionaire was, in my opinion, a better work than it’s source text, Q & A by Vikas Swarup.
It’s by no means a perfect movie, and I’m not sure if I believe it deserves the status it has been elevated to, but I do believe it improves on Q & A, by being less obvious and overdone.
I can’t speak on the controversies about it’s social and political responsibility because I think that’s pretty much fucking crap. To be scholarly about it: art is art, it doesn’t have any responsibility to anyone; and if it isn’t art, then fuck it.
In the spirit of the last few weeks, let’s talk about its Oliver Twist elements.
First of all the protagonist, Jamal, is passive through most of the film and forced to enter into different circles, much like Oliver. He does eventually learn to take his life into his own hands, but he spend most of the movie having things done to him rather than doing things. Oh yeah, and he’s an orphan.
Ram on the other hand is much more hands-on, and in my opinion much less Twist-esque.
Also, Jamal, Salim, and Latika start working for Maman, who is pretty much Fagen, except he scoops out people’s eyes. It felt the most like Dickens during that time, and even includes them escaping and then eventually coming back to reckon with the problem.
It’s not just like Dickens though. The most important way it differs is that Jamal actually does move up in class, unlike Oliver who merely regains what was already his. This really is a rags to riches situation, though when we get there it doesn’t even seem like the money matters to Jamal.
Trains are a big theme in the film, and they seem to represent change, just as they’re said to in the novel. The first time the train comes the boys lose their mother, and they lose Latika later on too. But it also brings Latika back to Jamal, and it’s used to connect the boys from early childhood to their teenage years.
As I already expressed, I think that the adaptation is quite a bit better than the original. By abandoning the Forest Gump-esque references and absurdity and replacing it with a more believable story, we’re left with something that is more appealing. Sure it loses its humor and much of the subtext is lost as well, and I think that’s a shame.
Q & A might have more to say, and it might even be more historically or politically correct, but at the end of the day Beaufoy’s story is just better.
birthofthedrool 