Why SlumDog worked?

SlumDog Millionaire (SDM) bagged 8 out of 10 Academy Awards – a clean sweep in all aspects! Its Felicitation and Merry-making time - not only because the movie had a smooth home-run today but also (and probably more so) because every winner mentioned ‘Mumbai’ in their speeches in a ‘never seen before’ reverence. The Indians are proud and our news channels and websites responded with their predictable and by now beaten-to-death clichéd pop ups – “India has finally arrived”. India won in the reels but gentlemen get real! I don’t think SDM won because of the way it projected India and tried to spin a feel-good factor projecting a less-fortunate rising above the ashes and ending up winning both – the money and the woman. It didn’t win because it captured the indomitable spirit of mankind or because it had the genius AR Rahman. It won because US wanted it to win or to put it better US needed it to win for reasons which are pure commercial in nature and far from creative meritocracy.

I saw SDM in its opening week in India. I had read the book before. SDM disappointed me. It would have worked big time had it not been promoted with all the “Oscar” hype and the said clichés. It was pretty similar to an average Bollywood masala feel-good entertainment caper which gets rolled out almost every third week. It has foot-thumping songs, a hero growing up fighting against all the situations and destined to win, it has a love story playing up the super-safe reunion track and it has betrayal, sacrifices and all the smorgasbord of Indian cinematic sentiments. And then it has the Indian poverty and wretchedness which always titillates the international audience. It was quite average or to put it more generously, average at its best. We make such stuff dime a dozen and thankfully, these days we make much better movies. Then why SDM worked big time for all and sundry. Let me first enlist my doubts over the factors which everyone says has made SDM such a magnificent watch:
1. The spirit of the movie – hasn’t the same spirit been captured innumerable times till date and in a much better way? Frankly in India almost every other movie is about an underdog having the last laugh. These days the mention of the phrase “indomitable spirit” sounds nothing more than procrastination. We fuck up everywhere in life (read: the world today), then we make these mind-fuck uplifting movies and celebrate the human spirit! Danny doesn’t offer anything new.
2. The technique - the Indian technicians have performed much better – watch out Binod Pradhan in Eklavya. That’s called cinematic exactitude and a top notch deliverable. SDM was good but not outstanding.
3. The Performances - I have done my R&D over other nominations – Frost/Nixon, The Milk and The Reader. I had managed sneak peeks of these movies. Thankfully SDM was not nominated in these categories because it just had no chance at all!
4. AR Rahman - The music is good but again the phenom called Rahman has given much much better soundtracks in the past. Listen to Delhi 6 and SDM would sound as if it has come from Anu Malik who has upped his ante a bit.

Then why did SDM win?

The answer is, as I have mentioned before, US needed it to win. All the major 6 studious of US are going through a low. Four of them have shown a negative growth and two of them are marginally positive. Even if you isolate the impact of slowdown, these studious have displayed a stagnant revenue growth. What they need is a market beyond US – a market big enough which can fuel their growth and give them the numbers. They need a market where there is a proclivity towards movies in entertainment. And can it get better than India. India has very limited means of entertainment and therefore cinema always enjoyed the dominance. Inspite of the huge market size, the Hindi movie is a mere $ 2 bn industry today. This shows the void and the resultant opportunity. And this is what the US studious have seen and lately started trying to exploit it. They got a beautiful opportunity in SDM. It was not an Indian movie but positioned in India with Indian characters. It has all the elements which are savored by Indian audience and it had stuff which titillated the international audience. It was not an outstanding work of art but an intelligently packaged piece of entertainment palatable to many a bellies. And this is why a movie which was supposed to release directly in Home-Vidoes suddenly captured everybody’s attention. India is a perfect hedge for all the Hollywood studios and SDM was a perfect product/instrument to enter India. Having SDM won the Oscars, I can bet that now all the studios are just ready to turbo-bat similar products in India and other markets. Its makes perfect commercial sense. And therefore SDM, inspite of all its vulnerabilities and flaws, was bound to win. As Clinton said – Its always about the economy, stupid”! This was exactly the reasons few years back when India gave the world a slew of beauties in Miss Universe and Miss Worlds (Aishwarya, Sushmita, Priyanka, Lara, Yukta – all winning almost back-to-back, why we don’t see any of them winning now?). The cosmetic behemoths of the world were looking out for a newer bigger market at that time – and they found it in India. Therefore they first built the aspirations of Indian women by making Indian winners and then fed to those aspirations through their products.

So now it seems that among other things, capitalism has taken another toll in the US society – meritocracy. Greed for money has trumped the quench for art. Does meritocracy stand any chance in today’s world or be it damned!. Well that’s another question and another debate. Right now lets enjoy SDM because it has definitely proved one thing – its not that SDM has fed to India’s popularity but rather India has fed to SDM’s success. Therefore reversing the gear, I do admit – Indian has arrived.