Just watched the trailer for 127 Hours and I can tell you that I will never, ever see this film, unless I am trapped somewhere for hours---or days—on end and am forced to watch. I couldn’t even stand the trailer, even though the famous amputation is not even hinted at therein. The frenetic pace of the preview, the claustrophobic spaces of the canyons, the glorification of the extreme outdoorsman is all too much for me. Knowing that a rather gruesome amputation takes place in all its gory detail is also, I confess, a good deal of my aversion to seeing this film. That said, it is getting great reviews, so I am open to changing my mind. I think. The problem is that Danny Boyle, who exercised my worst fears and willies by putting me front seat at a blinding of a young child is the director I most want to avoid at this point, never having made it through Trainspotting and hating his Academy Award-winning feature Slumdog Millionaire, site of aforementioned blinding. I mean I really hated it, not just disliked it.
I’d like to revisit just why, and am hoping for loud and fervent disagreement, as well as encouragement to actually see 127 Hours so that I can have more to bitch about.
Slumdog, like Boyle’s other films, also got lots of great reviews, with a few notable exceptions. Anthony Lane got it right when he critiqued Slumdog Millionaire in The New Yorker. The fabrications were a bit much at times: the “millionaire” questions serendipitously dovetailing with the protagonist Jamal’s specific memories; the police, who once they stopped torturing Jamal, revealing themselves to be very good listeners who had just been having a bad day. Lane posits that formulaic nature of the plot is a fault. But I think the very real problem with the film (if we can say “real problem” when discussing a film about orphans in Mumbai) is that it doesn’t quite settle between the fairy tale aspects of the movie and the realistic situations the film portrays.
Slumdog offers the viewer a glimpse of the very worst that life has to offer. Several scenes are laced with particular dread: the blinding and maiming and pimping of children convinces the American viewer that things are bad indeed. The menace contained in those scenes is well-wrought, and much of the views of Mumbai slum life are visually powerful. Nonetheless, such scenes are tinged with a smug (and perhaps, necessary) relief: we know in advance that our protagonist will be spared such a fate, and will triumph over his circumstances.
There are moments when the terrifying realism contained in parts of the film give way to a strange, Hollywood-esque sensibility. Take the example of the latrine scene—are we supposed to laugh when Jamal emerges, covered in shit, to approach his hero film star? Or do we wince at the fetidness of his situation? I wondered if the young Jamal came down with a raging case of dysentery when it was all over; all we got was an image of him being scrubbed clean by his mother, and emerging healthy and intact soon after. Is this a foreshadowing of Jamal’s future triumph over his impoverished past?
My assessment is that the schizophrenia of the film doesn’t serve the narrative well. The most interesting parts of the film to me were those that got short shrift. The MC of the quiz show hints at a past as a child of the slum. But this merits a single mention and then is gone. Does he want Jamal to win or lose? The ambiguity of this character, his slightly menacing air, is compelling. He is so compelling, so theatrical—the entire look of the stage and this characters stagecraft are reminiscent of an old-time circus big-top launched into the twenty-first century—that I felt sorry for his American counterpart, the dullard Meredith Vieira, who will always pale in comparison henceforth.
The police chief, too, is one of these underused characters. He decides not to torture Jamal, but to psychoanalyze him; the change in stance hints at depths barely revealed as his sympathy for Jamal increases. Instead of developing these characters, we are given Salim, whose path seems clear from the first. Or the hapless character of Latika, who in true cloistered princess form only exists as a plot catalyst and eye candy. She is moved about like a pawn by one male character and then another and another still. While it might be accurate that girls and women often have little agency over their lives, it’s hard to see that the filmmakers are merely aiming for veracity in this case. What it does is render Jamal’s motivation for all he does—and thus, the plot—flat and uninvolving. We have no sense of Latika as a person; she is rendered as ideal, or an idea. I had so many questions. Why, I wondered, doesn’t Jamal ever learn her last name? Seeing as how Latika grew up in the slums with no access to dental care, why are her teeth so perfect?
What if, instead, this film stayed on track and followed the bleak life of the blinded Arvind, forced into servitude by the man who has maimed him? What if we were to actually witness, in some way, the forced prostitution of Latika, instead of having it alluded to, all while her good looks are emphasized and eroticized (recall her twirling in dance, with bejeweled arms and ankles)? What if we saw Jamal’s living quarters while he is working as a chai wallah?
What if, instead of moving back and forth from reality bites to fantasy, we were to stick with the fairy tale all the way? Scrappy kids make their way through Mumbai slum life, take jobs: one brother (Salim) goes to a life of crime, the other takes a job as a chai wallah(Jamal) and tries to educate himself (all while wearing the beautifully pressed dress shirts he sports in all the final scenes). They fight over the girl. Boy loses girl, gets girl loses girl goes on show and wins girl back. Cut to dance number.
As it was, the Bollywood-style dance number at the end had a tinge of incredulity. Was this really how we were going to end this practically joyless film? Or were we all celebrating in dance because those of us in the theater never had to witness such misery ever again if we so chose? While I’ve loved this kind of thing in Bollywood films like Bride and Prejudice, it seemed discordant given the material of most of Slumdog. Finally, the forced pursuit of the happy ending, along with the trumped-up serendipity of the final quiz show question and stage-lit reunion of the lovers left me feeling empty.
