The REEL Addict 

By Souf Jalili

Indie darlings have by now become normal fixture in the annual Oscar race. Every year, a small, quirky, feel-good film woos the Academy, creeping up behind the usual Oscar bait to score multiple nominations and even sweep some major awards.  Following closely on the heels of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and JUNO, the coveted spot for this year’s “little film that could” has been claimed by Danny Boyle’s SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE.Winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival, and recently nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Golden Globes, the film is a rousing crowd pleaser that has the potential to go a long way through positive word-of-mouth and it may even end up winning Best Picture at the Oscars. But, what I am really hoping and rooting for is a Best Director Oscar for Danny Boyle and with SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE being his most accessible film to date, this may finally be the year when he breaks into the big league.

A film set entirely in India, with no big names and a third of its dialogue in subtitled Hindi hardly sounds like the sort of material audiences and Oscar voters go ga ga over, but the credit for making the subject matter so accessible and appealing goes entirely to Boyle. The exotic setting could have appeared inaccessible to mainstream audiences, and a film set in the slums of Mumbai could have been sad and depressing, but instead Boyle makes it light and immensely entertaining and very heartfelt, uplifting and inspiring at the same time.

Given the fact that the film is a coming-of-age comedy, a Bollywood romance, a game-show drama, a Dickensian saga of class struggle, and a gangster tale all rolled into one, any other take on such a mélange of genres could have resulted in a big mess.  With his expertise in genre-hopping, however, Boyle manages to whip up all the sub-plots into a very satisfying mix and he weaves the story together in a very enthralling and entertaining manner.

Boyle’s seething passion for filmmaking is evident in every frame of the movie; he shoots India with a sharp eye using flashy, frenetic cinematography, kinetic editing, a pop soundtrack and smooth transitions between segments and he even pays tribute to the musical numbers and larger-than-life style of storytelling customary in Bollywood cinema.  The film is a visual wonder, full of life and color, but style is never just used to make up for a lack of substance. Despite all the dazzling filmmaking, at its core, the movie is a simple and touching love story and Boyle extracts great performances from the lead pair to make their romance believable. Most importantly, despite shooting the entire film from a Western perspective, Boyle exhibits a deep appreciation for India and its culture and he avoids falling into the trap of sentimentalizing the landscape by finding just the right balance between the cheesy and dark moments and telling the tale with enough grit and edge to avoid any overt sentimentality or emotional manipulation.

Boyle accomplishments with SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE only prove to emphasize that he is, without a doubt, one the most underrated and exciting film directors in the world today. Over the years he has built a reputation for making soulful and refreshing genre movies, breathing new life into everything from horror to sci-fi to thriller and fantasy and his immense range and penchant for making genre films, he reminds me a lot of Stanley Kubrick.

Transitioning from mainstream theatre, Boyle made his feature film directorial debut in 1995 with the underrated Scottish noir SHALLOW GRAVE, and followed it up with the cult-smash TRAINSPOTTING which established him as a household name. Since then he has since genre-hopped his way through a screwball fantasy rom-com (A LIFE LESS ORDINARY), a backpacking adventure (THE BEACH), a post-apocalyptic zombie horror (28 DAYS LATER), a children’s fantasy (MILLIONS), a sci-fi thriller (last year’s SUNSHINE), and finally, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE which itself transcends a number of different genres. What all these films have in common is Boyle’s distinctive sensibility and film-making style and a certain exuberance and freshness that he brings to the table.  Boyle also happens to have a knack for spotting great talent and uncovering talented young actors, whether it be Ewan McGregor and Christopher Eccleston in SHALLOW GRAVE, Robert Carlyle and Kelly Macdonald in TRAINSPOTTING, Cillian Murphy in 28 DAYS LATER, and his latest discovery, Dev Patel, who is earning raves for his portrayal of the underdog, Jamal in SLUMDOG.

SLUMDOG may have allowed Boyle to reach a much larger audience than his previous films and it may be the most accomplished work on his impressively diverse directorial resume. It is Boyle’s finest hour and illustrates all of his strengths as a master filmmaker and story-teller, as well as how his films are always a celebration of life, brimming with a passion and energy that is manifested in his own personality.