Re: [Pen-l] RE: Movies...

[ravi <ravi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 28, 2009, at 4:26 AM, 123hop@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> In SDM, the hero, having suffered, is fated to win the game show --  
> and when he walks away with the money and the girl, you're not  
> supposed to ask how his good fortune does anything for the gazillion  
> others who now remain exactly in the state he was in before.

There is a scene in SDM where Jamal returns to Bombay to search for  
the girl and comes across a blind beggar boy in an underpass who  
recognises him from their "orphanage" days. The blind boy comments:  
Jamal, you got lucky and escaped. I didn't. That's the only difference.

I think the maker(s) of the movie have tried to make this point  
throughout the movie. To me, these efforts read literally as an  
apology for the "feel good" (as you put it) or "masala" nature of the  
movie (in India, there is, or at least used to be, a differentiation  
between "masala" and "art" movies, the former the typical "Bollywood"  
product full of song and dance and improbable valour and fortune).  
Which is fine I guess... Mani Ratnam, a Tamil movie maker, has been  
making soft-core masala movies more than a decade. But when the movie  
(made by a non-Indian) tries to obtain its "art" half of creds via  
poverty porn, it leaves a bad taste. Thus my preference for Salaam  
Bombay.

	--ravi


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