The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Danny Boyle · a film in English and Hindi · 2008 · about 120 minutes · from the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup
Mode
Fable of destiny in the form of a case: Hindi popular melodrama of brothers and destined love, shot in the manner of a kinetic British art cinema
Mythos
The orphan who passes through the city’s underworld to win the captive princess; the two brothers, one who betrays and one who keeps faith; the riddle contest answered for life; the trickster at the gate
Phase
One night in a police station between two broadcasts, and through it a life from childhood in the slum to the last question, each question opening a part of the past
Presentation
Feature film in colour, about 120 minutes, in English and Hindi, the Hindi largely subtitled; one release version; much of it handheld on location, with the youngest roles played by children from Mumbai
Register
From the latrine to the riot, from comedy to horror at one kinetic pitch, saturated and loud, ending in song and dance
Scale
Two brothers and a girl, a city growing over its slums, a quiz watched by a country, and India’s place in a global economy, crossed at speed
Governing Proposition
A young man from the slums of Mumbai is one question from the top prize of a television quiz, and the police beat him because a boy like him cannot know the answers. Each answer was learned at the price of a wound or a lesson in his life, so that the game becomes a biography; the film shows a knowledge the poor must prove, and then lets destiny, announced on a card, answer what its social picture asked.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The film opens on a card in the form of a quiz question, with four answers to choose from. The last of them is “It is written”. The card returns at the end, answered, and between the two the film sets its whole story under fate. That is its frame and its wager: a life told as the answers to a game, each answer already in the life before the question is asked, and a destiny named before anything has happened to earn it.
Three time planes are braided. In a police station, on the night between the show’s two broadcasts, an inspector and a constable question Jamal, a young man from the slums who has come within one question of the top prize of the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. The show is played back to them on tape, question by question, and then goes out live for the last. Each question opens a passage of his life, from early childhood in the Juhu slum to the present, in which he learned its answer. Danny Boyle directed, with Loveleen Tandan credited as co-director in India, from Simon Beaufoy’s screenplay after Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A (2005); Anthony Dod Mantle photographed it, Chris Dickens cut it, and A. R. Rahman wrote the music. Christian Colson produced it for Celador Films and Film4. It was first shown at Telluride in 2008.
The inheritance is double. One side is the Hindi popular cinema of brothers on opposite sides of the law, with its melodrama, its songs and its destined love; the other is Boyle’s own British cinema of kinetic style. The film takes the Bollywood story whole and shoots it in the real slums and stations of Mumbai, much of it handheld, in English and Hindi, as a British production with no stars and a largely Indian cast. The stake was real. The swerve is one of transfer and texture: the melodrama is inherited rather than questioned, and the frame of question and flashback was already in the novel.
Movement II
Before the tape is played, Jamal is hung by his wrists and given electric shocks. A boy from the slums cannot know the answers, so he must have cheated, and he is tortured until he is believed. Irrfan Khan plays the inspector, and the frame scenes have his weight. This is the clearest image of what the film knows: that the poor man’s knowledge was paid for in his life, and that a society which cannot imagine such knowledge treats it as a crime to be proved.
The form carries that knowledge. Told in order, from the slum to the studio, the story would be a melodrama of rags to riches; told through the interrogation, it becomes a case, and each memory becomes evidence. The viewer stands where the inspector stands, doubting first, then convinced. The first memories are of children. They are chased across the slum and an airfield to Rahman’s percussion, and the child Jamal plunges into a latrine pit to reach Amitabh Bachchan for his autograph: grotesque comedy carried to a kind of glory.
Then the riot. Seen at the height of a child’s eye, Muslims are killed in the slum, the boys’ mother among them, and a small boy dressed as Rama stands still in the chaos. It is the one image of terror in the film that stays, and it gives the question about Rama its answer. Here the device holds: the episode is required, and the knowledge it yields cost a mother. The disclosure is in the image more than in words, and it is credited fully. What the film does with it later is another matter.
Movement III
The orphaned brothers, Jamal and Salim, and a girl from the slum, Latika, are taken in by Maman, who runs a ring of child beggars. A blind child who sings earns more, and the ring blinds children to raise its takings. The boy Arvind sings, and is blinded: the act is held off screen, a spoon over his eyes and a cry. The bhajan he sang, by Surdas, is the answer to a later question. Elsewhere in the film a hundred dollar note Arvind gives Jamal answers a question about Franklin. These are the episodes the device makes required, and they are the film at its most exact.
The children carry these passages. The youngest of them are children from Mumbai, and they are the most alive performers in the film. Dod Mantle’s camera runs low to the ground with them and tilts in the city, so that Mumbai becomes a pressure on the boys, and Dickens’s cutting makes the escapes and the riot in a few minutes each. Maman is a Fagin; the city is an underworld the orphan must pass through. The figures are built into a pattern older than the film, and the pattern is load-bearing in the plot.
Not every passage is required. The brothers escape and ride the roofs of trains; at the Taj Mahal they pass themselves off as guides and steal tourists’ shoes; later comes the comedy of a call centre serving Britain. These are incident more than need, and the questions are fitted to them. That is the contrivance at the centre of the device: it makes every episode required by choosing episodes to fit the questions. The necessity holds at its line, and no higher.
Movement IV
The brothers are Cain and Abel made particular. Salim, played as a young man by Madhur Mittal, betrays his brother and sells his brother’s love, and Latika is held captive in the house of Javed, a gangster; at the end he frees her and dies in a bath of banknotes as the last question is put, the closest the film comes to tragic grandeur. The rhyme with the latrine pit is one of the film’s pleasures on return. Prem Kumar, the host, played by Anil Kapoor, feeds Jamal a wrong answer and is the trickster at the gate of the riddle contest, where the hero answers for his life.
The last question is about The Three Musketeers, the book the boys never finished at school. Its answer is the one name in the book that Jamal never learned. The setup is planted early and paid in full, and the myth of orphan, brothers and captive princess is built rather than summoned. It is held below the highest mark because destiny is announced by a card rather than earned by the structure, and because the figures stay types: Latika, played as a young woman by Freida Pinto, most of all.
The romance is required by the plot and thin as a thing in itself. Latika is lost three times, and the three losses repeat one beat. Dev Patel plays the adult Jamal earnestly and narrowly, and the style runs at one pitch, kinetic, saturated and loud, where the material wanted change. Once the frame has made its point, the later questions serve the plot, and the last stretch leaves the case for a chase and a reunion. There the form becomes a container rather than an instrument, and the film’s argument about knowledge gives way to its fable.
Movement V
Jamal answers, and finds Latika at the railway station; the reunion and the kiss are the romantic summit, and they are sentiment. Then the end credits run over a song and dance to Rahman’s “Jai Ho” on a platform of a Mumbai terminus. One law is meant to cover the dance and the spoon over Arvind’s eyes: the boy’s life, however cruel, was written toward this end, and the song is the fable’s reward for what the riot and the blinding took. Much of the film obeys it. But the horror is too great for the comfort the fable gives it, the realism of place pulls against the fairy tale of plot, and the end feels granted rather than earned.
Its reach was wide. It won eight Academy Awards, Best Picture among them, two of them Rahman’s; it made international careers for Patel and Pinto; its song went round the world; and it set off a sharp debate in India about how the West pictures it. The force behind that reach was modest: a Bollywood story told in a festival style, which few films took up and which was Boyle’s before it. Eighteen years on the film survives whole in its one version, shown, streamed and taught, but its surface, the small digital cameras of 2007 and 2008, a game show of its decade, a Mumbai of its moment, has dated, and its standing has cooled as the argument over its view of poverty has grown. Its return gives less than its first viewing.
That is what holds it in Tier III, at 7.5 from a sum of 89.4. City of God, at 8.0 in Tier IV, tells children of a city’s slums in a braided, kinetic form, and its form is its knowledge; its disclosure is not overruled by a fable. Back to the Future stands at the same 7.5 from a larger sum. The film holds many orders, family, religion, the state, labour, crime, money, the media and the city, crossed at speed and mostly joined by the questions, and it builds its myth. What keeps it from the tier above is that its disclosure yields to its destiny, its return is slight, and its form, once its point is made, becomes a frame for a fable it has already written on a card.
Act III · The Twelve
The device is the film’s claim to necessity. Each question is answered by a wound or a lesson, so the quiz becomes a biography and the subtractive test seems to hold by construction. The mother killed in the riot gives the question about Rama; the blinding of Arvind in Maman’s begging ring gives the question about the Surdas bhajan; the hundred dollar note Arvind gives him answers Franklin. Those parts are required. But the device that makes every part required is itself the contrivance, the story choosing its episodes to fit the questions. Some episodes serve incident more than need: the Taj Mahal guiding and the stolen shoes, the ride on the train roofs, the comedy of the call centre. The romance repeats one beat in Latika’s three losses.
Score: 7.5 / 10
What the film brings into the open can be stated: a boy from the slums knows things the educated cannot credit, because his knowledge was paid for in his life, and a society that cannot imagine that knowledge assumes he cheated. The police station, where he is hung by his wrists and given electric shocks before he is believed, is its clearest image. The film shows, in image more than in words, the riot in which Muslims are killed in the slum, the ring that blinds children to raise their takings, towers risen over the old slum, a call centre serving Britain. What holds the axis low is that the fairy tale overrules the disclosure: destiny answers what the social picture asked, luck rescues him, and the slum is often seen as spectacle from outside.
Score: 7.0 / 10
The film rises often, by velocity and spectacle more than by depth. The opening chase of children across the slum and an airfield, cut to Rahman’s percussion, is kinetic elevation. The child Jamal’s plunge into a latrine pit to reach Amitabh Bachchan’s autograph is grotesque comedy carried to a kind of glory. The riot, seen at a child’s height, with a small boy dressed as Rama standing still in it, is the one image of terror that stays. Maman’s spoon over Arvind’s eyes is dread held off screen. Salim’s death in a bath of banknotes, as the last question is put, comes closest to tragic grandeur. Against these the romantic summit, the reunion at the station, is sentiment, and the closing dance is joy outside the story. The height is frequent and seldom deep.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The myth is built, and this is the film’s strongest axis after survival. The orphan who passes through the underworld of the city to win the princess is Dickensian and older: Maman is a Fagin, Javed an ogre in his house, Latika the captive. The brothers are Cain and Abel made particular: Salim sells his brother’s love, then frees her and dies in the money. The quiz is a riddle contest, the hero answering for his life, and Prem Kumar, who feeds him a wrong answer, is the trickster at the gate. The Three Musketeers, the book the boys never finished at school, returns as the last question. What holds it below the gate: destiny is asserted by a card more than earned by the structure, and the figures stay types, Latika most of all.
Score: 7.8 / 10
The inheritance is double: the Hindi popular cinema of brothers on opposite sides of the law, with its melodrama, its songs and its destined love; and Boyle’s own British cinema of kinetic style. The turn is to take the Bollywood story whole, shoot it with small digital cameras in the real slums and stations of Mumbai, braid it with a game show and an interrogation, and send it into Western cinemas as an English-language film. The stake was real: a British production with no stars, a largely Indian cast, a city its makers did not know. What holds the figure is that the swerve is one of transfer and texture. The melodrama is inherited, not questioned, and the frame of question and flashback was already in Swarup’s novel.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Change the form and the film loses its argument. Told in order, from the slum to the studio, it would be a melodrama of rags to riches. Told through the interrogation and the questions, it becomes a case about knowledge: what a poor man can know, and how he came to know it. The form makes each memory evidence, and the viewer stands where the inspector stands, first doubting, then convinced. The handheld, tilted camera makes the city a pressure on the boy, and the cutting between the studio’s blue light and the slum’s colour sets two Indias side by side. What holds the axis is the share that is container rather than instrument: once the frame has made its point, later questions serve the plot, and the last stretch leaves the case for a chase and a reunion.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Eighteen years of evidence, and the return yields less than the first encounter. The questions its criticism has carried are mostly about the film rather than in it: whether its picture of the slum is exploitation or witness; whether a Western director’s view of Mumbai is a tourist’s; what was owed to the children who played the youngest roles. Within the film, whether destiny or chance answers the questions is set and settled by the closing card. The craft rewards attention on return, in the rhyme of the latrine and the bath of banknotes, the Musketeers planted and paid, Rahman’s cues. What holds the axis lowest is that the characters do not grow in depth, and the meaning is as clear on the first viewing as on the fourth.
Score: 6.8 / 10
The field is the cinema of the 2000s. The intrinsic force is modest: the film did not reorganise what film can do. It joined the Bollywood melodrama to a Western festival style with a kinetic digital camera, and showed that a story set wholly in India, partly in Hindi, with no stars, could become a worldwide popular success. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: eight Academy Awards, Best Picture among them; a large box office; international careers for Dev Patel and Freida Pinto; two Oscars for A. R. Rahman and his “Jai Ho” a song heard around the world; a sharp debate in India over how the West pictures it. What holds the figure: few films took its form, its style was Boyle’s before it, and its reach is fame more than redirection.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Survival is weighed over eighteen years, on form, presence and fabric. The form survives whole: one release version, complete, on every format. Presence is wide: a Best Picture winner, shown and streamed continuously, taught in courses on globalisation and on Indian cinema, its song and its dance still in use. Eighteen years is short evidence, and the figure is set by it, with a breadth of presence that would carry it a little further. What holds it there is the surface: the look of small digital cameras of 2007 and 2008, a game show format fixed to its decade, a Mumbai of that moment, and a reputation that has cooled as the argument over its view of poverty has grown. Box office and prizes are presence, not proof.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Command of the medium, and in its departments of a high order. Anthony Dod Mantle’s handheld and digital photography runs low to the ground in the chases and tilts in the city. Chris Dickens’s cutting braids three time planes cleanly and makes the opening chase and the riot in a few minutes. A. R. Rahman’s score joins Hindi film song to dance music and carries much of the feeling. Irrfan Khan and Anil Kapoor give the frame scenes weight; the children, the youngest from the slums themselves, are the most alive performers in the film. The charges run through the centre: Patel is earnest and narrow as the adult Jamal, Pinto has a part with almost nothing in it, and the style runs at one pitch, kinetic, saturated and loud, where the material wanted change.
Score: 7.8 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the blinding of Arvind, held off screen by a spoon and a cry, and the dance on the station platform under the credits. One law is meant to govern both: the boy’s life, however cruel, is written toward this end, and the song is the fable’s reward for what the riot and the blinding took. Much of the range obeys it. The comedy of the latrine, the Taj Mahal and the call centre answers to the same law as the riot, for each is a scene in which the boy survives by his wits and learns an answer. What holds the axis is where the law bends: the horror is too great for the comfort the fable gives it, and the realism of place pulls against the fairy tale of plot, so the end feels granted rather than earned.
Score: 7.4 / 10
Judged on what a film of about two hours holds. The orders are many and mostly joined by the questions: the family, in two brothers and a dead mother; religion and the state, in the riot and the police; labour and crime, in the begging ring, Javed’s gang and the call centre; the city’s growth, in the towers over the old slum; the media, in the quiz and the crowds before television sets; money, as the prize of twenty million rupees and as Salim’s death; India in the global economy, in Western tourists and calls from Britain. What holds the figure: consciousness is held only from outside, through action, and Latika’s not at all; the sacred is a child in costume and a card; and the orders are crossed at speed rather than held.
Score: 7.2 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.5 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 8.2, then The Archetypal Deep and The Made at 7.8. A film that survives whole in its one version and is shown, streamed and taught across eighteen years; a myth of orphan, brothers, riddle contest and captive princess built into the plot, with the book the boys never finished returning as the last question; and a making of a high order in its departments, in Dod Mantle’s camera, Dickens’s braided cutting, Rahman’s score and the children.
Limiting Dimension
The Bottomless Well at 6.8: the questions carried about the film are mostly about it rather than in it, the characters do not grow in depth, and the meaning is as clear on the first viewing as on the fourth. Above it, The Unconcealment at 7.0: a knowledge the poor must prove, shown in the police station, the riot and the begging ring, and overruled by a fable in which destiny answers what the social picture asked.
The Necessity Cap is met at 7.5, exactly at its threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Made at 7.8, The Living Form at 7.6, The Inner Law at 7.4, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 8.2, The Archetypal Deep at 7.8, The Swerve at 7.3, Pressure on Tradition at 7.2 and The Unconcealment at 7.0 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Bottomless Well, 6.8, The Unconcealment, 7.0, Pressure on Tradition, 7.2, The Swerve, 7.3, and The Inner Law, 7.4, all below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.2. Three of the five summit conditions are met. The work stands where its aggregate places it: 7.5 from a sum of 89.4, in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of Slumdog Millionaire as released in 2008, about 120 minutes, in its one release version, from the opening card to the dance under the end credits: directed by Danny Boyle, with Loveleen Tandan credited as co-director in India, from a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy after Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A (2005), produced by Christian Colson for Celador Films and Film4, photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle, edited by Chris Dickens, with music by A. R. Rahman; with Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor and Irrfan Khan, and children from Mumbai in the youngest roles. First shown at Telluride in 2008; released in the United States in late 2008 and in Britain in early 2009. No print, script or subtitle file was consulted. The film is in English and Hindi, the Hindi largely subtitled; every axis is judged on the film as made, and nothing is charged to its subtitles. One line is quoted, the words of the opening card, which are certain; no other dialogue is held to the word, and the wording of the quiz questions is not given. The novel is the film’s source, not the work. Details that could not be verified, among them the number of questions and their exact order in Jamal’s life, the camera models, the film’s debt to particular Hindi films, the history of its distribution, the dialogue share and the shot counts, are not given; the later lives of the child actors are not judged.