3 March 2009

Who wants to be a Slumdog millionaire?

I didn't expect Slumdog Millionaire to win the Best Picture Oscar and even less to win 8 Oscars at all! Before the Oscar ceremony I had only seen the trailer and it is Alice, my colleague, who announced me the results last week. We decided then to film a short commentary about it (watch it here).
After watching the movie last week-end, I understand better how it can be an oscarized movie despite its relatively low-budget and its absence of famous actors from the US film-industry: the plot, a success-story with a happy-ending, is still quite hollywoodian, the characters and especially Jamal, the main hero, are manicheistic enough to be recognized as "types" (the naive and idealistic one, Jamal, the cynic who redeem himself, Salim, the beauty, innocent but pushed by social and economic imperatives, Latika). Even the non-linear construction of the narration does not seem that original after one hour... (for a maestro piece of cinema, in editing and narrative terms, see Valkyrie, which, in my sense is not a historical movie but a successful suspense exercise in cinema).

Still, I cannot say that I didn't like watching the movie, I did feel a bit irritated by the predictable nature of the end but the movie is enough entertaining and meaningful to be recommended and, probably, awarded!


 
Clicky Web Analytics