In Film
What Hollywood did in 2008 may have worked then, both stateside and abroad, but it’s by no means guaranteed to continue working in the future. Slumdog Millionaire is a mongrel piece of work based on a novel by a globe-trotting Indian diplomat. It’s structured around a frequently franchised international game show, stocked with Indian cinema heavyweights, and shot like a jittery thesis film by a dark-hearted Brit who is seemingly ill-suited to the story’s romantic light. But the film’s swirled-in cultural streams—equal parts Dickensian grotesquery, Horatio Alger striving, ‘90s arthouse growl, and Bollywood flair—just may make it the perfect kind of creation to survive in the world’s increasingly cross-pollinated cultural landscape…
You can read the rest of this week’s “The Screener” column — about the Golden Globes, Slumdog Millionaire, The Dark Knight, and other sundry items — now at PopMatters.
Chris Barsanti 