Perfect Timing

The timing of the release of the Danny Boyle film "Slumdog Millionaire" is perfect. Not because it takes place in Mumbai where we just witnessed the latest "made-for-western-media" shootout drama, except with real bullets, real dead people, and real lunatics. No, Slumdog Millionaire although horrifying in its portrayal of the streets of Mumbai, of the filth, the savagery, the destitution, and the utter anarchy of the squatters' slums, is really a fairytale film about hope. Like the election of Barack Obama, in Slumdog Millionaire, hope triumphs over cynicism.

Now the film is shocking with some scenes that I couldn't bring myself to watch. The lives led by these two brothers Salim and Jamal, orphaned when their mother is killed by a mob, made our friend comment: How could any mother allow her children to act in a film about such cruelty? It's brutal. It's brutal in a far more realistic way than Quentin Tarantino, because Danny Boyle, the director, filmed Slumdog Millionaire in Mumbai, on the trash heaps, and through the squatters' nests. How these boys survive is the story of brothers, where the older boy sacrifices his innocence for the younger.

"I've Loved You So Long" is a film about sisters. "Slumdog Millionaire" is a film about brothers.

The story unfolds in episodes, and the way the episodes work, Boyle is able to maintain extraordinary tension and suspense. I was very stressed out at points. It's also totally over the top, sensational, melodramatic, and fairytalish, meeting the extremes of cruelty with the ecstacy of love, goodness, and truth.

It's not mindless, but it's still entertaining, but not for the faint-hearted.

It won't be great for tourism to India.

When we got back from the film this afternoon, we watched Barack Obama's interview on Meet the Press. His calm integrity, his intelligence, his grace, his clarity: these are the qualities we want from a leader. And his brand of change is what makes Slumdog Millionaire work: hope and goodness have an essential place in a cynical world.