Thoughts on Slumdog Millionaire and the 2008 Oscars

I thought briefly about coming up with an Oscar post, but though Sunday’s telecast certainly had its highs and its lows, I just couldn’t muster up the interest in recapping the whole thing, particularly with the profusion of liveblogs all over the internet.

However, while watching Slumdog pick up award after award, I became more and more bothered by something that I’d had an inkling about at the Golden Globes and even before that. Of all the people who climbed the stage to accept little gold men for their work on the film, only two of them were ethnically Indian – Resul Pookutty, who shared the Best Achievement in Sound trophy with two others, and A.R. Rahman, for score and for song (he shared the latter with Sampooran Singh Gulzar, who was not present).

For a film that featured no Anglo actors, and was based on material written by an Indian, this discrepancy bothers me. When you add this to the incredible industry of film production in India, the whole picture looks even more disturbing. For example, Rahman is one of the most prolific musicians working in Hindi film, creating gorgeous scores and songs for films like Lagaan (nominated in 2002 for Best Foreign Language Film), Dil Se ("Chaiyya Chaiyya" is one of my favorite songs of all time), Kandukondain Kandukondain and Guru, some of the biggest hits of the past ten years. He’s also done work in Western cinema, partnering with Deepa Mehta on her elements trilogy, and with Shekhar Kapur on Elizabeth: The Golden Age.

Not to undercut the terrific work Rahman did on the Slumdog soundtrack (“Jai Ho” is an awesome song), because I’m glad to see him getting some worldwide recognition, but I see him as the perfect example to make my point – India has a long and fascinating cinema history, one that has been ghettoized due to form (and I’ll admit – three-hour musicals aren’t for everyone) as well as cultural divides. My hope remains the same as when I saw Slumdog two months ago – that maybe the next time America rallies behind a film full of South Asian faces, there won’t just be white men behind the camera.

Guru (2007, India)

Focusing on such sexy topics as government regulation, business ethics, and journalistic independence, Mani Ratnam’s Guru is the latest of his films focusing on growth and change in contemporary India, giving as much screen time, if not more, to themes weightier than romance and wet saris (though there’s a bit of that, too). Unfortunately, it feels as if Guru is missing a reel or two – even at a 2 ½ hour run time, important turning points in the story, along with the development of several key characters, are given short shrift. Combined with an occasionally obnoxious use of slo-mo, I have to say that Guru is far less successful than films like Dil Se and Bombay, or even Roja, all of which find a better balance between story, character, and more weightier topics.

That said, there are some things to recommend Guru. It’s one of the most beautifully-filmed Hindi films I’ve seen, comparable to Lagaan and Dil Se in its sweeping camera moves and gorgeous settings (an early song sequence featuring Aishwarya Rai dancing amid crashing waves and rain-soaked temples is particularly breathtaking – I wish I’d seen it on the big screen). I know that Abhishek Bachchan has become a big star in India over the past few years, but this is the first film I’ve seen him in, and it’s obvious from the start that he’s inherited the bulk of his father’s charm. While occasionally reaching over-the-top, Bachchan is an incredibly strong presence, and his protagonist anchors the film, with the help of Rai as his feisty wife. It’s obvious as well that the two fell in love while shooting (they married shortly after).

Two more quick notes – first, that the English subtitles on the American DVD are terrible, often skipping several lines at a time and not providing captions for any of the songs. Second, Guru contains a first, at least for me, in Hindi films, something that even Slumdog Millionaire wouldn’t touch. Kind of took my breath away.

The Class/Entre les murs (2008, France)

One of the things that struck me most about The Class is the way that it uses language and dialogue as its primary tools of communication, almost entirely foregoing plot and stripping the visual down to the barest components. Based on Parisian teacher Francois Bergaudeau’s semi-autobiographical novel, director Laurent Cantet worked with Bergaudeau to bring together a group of real-life junior high students (with Bergaudeau himself as their teacher, Marin) into a loosely-structured film chronicling a year at the school. The student body make-up is fascinating – there are few, if any, ethnically French students – the majority are immigrants or first-generation, from North and West Africa, Central Asia, and even China. What ties them together is their youth and their Western cultural appropriations – and a marked opposition to Marin and his fellow teachers, almost all of whom are Western European, if not French. The battles they wage are almost entirely through words, as Marin tries to impress on them the importance of the French language in his attempt to influence their lives and bind them together in a more national sense. How well he fares is more realistic to the nature of youth and urban education than most other films about similar subject matters. It can be an incredibly frustrating film to watch, but also funny – some of the students are hilarious, in that boastful and blustering teenage way – and quite emotional. It’s an incredible piece of filmmaking, collaborative, unblinking, and my vote to win Best Foreign Film at this year’s Academy Awards.

Sparrow (2008, Hong Kong)

Lightweight and utterly charming, Sparrow is the story of four pickpockets and their troublesome run-in with a damsel in distress. At times, the film seems almost too giddy, and would probably suffer if it weren’t for a ruthless streak and some excellently-shot crime sequences. The whole thing is lovely to look at, in fact, which is a necessity in a film with such little dialog. At times, particularly in the beginning and again during the final street scene, Sparrow is infused with so much romanticism that I practically expected the characters to burst into song. Instead, the film walks the line between reckless emotion and the more careful tones of real life, and the result is a cinematic confection that feels fresh and classic at the same time.

Frost/Nixon (2008, USA)

There’s a moment near the very end of Frost/Nixon that sums up most of my problems with the film (and to spoil you – Nixon was totally guilty!). Just after the interviews have been taped and aired, one of the characters, in an interview segment filmed as if Frost/Nixon were a documentary, describes in detail how the medium of television is able to show Nixon’s guilt in a way that his recorded words alone could not.

My answer to this is pretty much . . . duh? I mean, what would be the point of making this film if this ultimate truth of medium and message weren’t patently obvious? As usual, Ron Howard tells instead of shows – or, rather, he does both, over and over again. Maybe it’s not all his fault – Peter Morgan’s screenplay, from his stage play, could have originated the problem – but, as usual, I find Howard’s film incredibly broad. Why not let audiences figure some things out for themselves?

Sukiyaki Western Django (2007, Japanese)

Oh, Takeshi Miike, how I’ve missed you.

There are so many layers to Sukiyaki Western Django that it can be more than a little mind-bending to unpack. Right from the start, Yojimbo is invoked (“Best not think about playing Yojimbo.”), which then turns towards A Fistful of Dollars, and the lesser-known Spaghetti Western, Django, before the whole thing turns back on itself as a remake of a remake of a remake (of a remake?), featuring an all-Japanese cast (pretty much) speaking English and adhering to a weird mixture of Japanese and Western weaponry, cultures, and settings. And since this is Miike, that’s not nearly the end to the odd – there’s the gang leader who’s obsessed with William Shakespeare’s Henry VI, the sheriff with multiple-personality disorder, the Japanese village named Nevada, and, regrettably, Quentin Tarantino. Unfortunately, no singing and dancing zombies. Maybe next time. (By the way, I highly recommend watching Sukiyaki with the English subtitles on, since most of the actors seem to be speaking phonetically.)

As a side note, after seeing him in this and Tokyo Sonata, Teruyuki Kagawa is becoming one of my favorite Japanese actors. His role here is hilariously over-the-top, light years away from his tamped-down salaryman in Sonata.

Wanted (2008, USA/German)

Wanted feels like what you might get if you mated Fight Club with The Matrix and then crossbred the result with director Timur Bekmambetov’s Night Watch series. Like the Watch films, Wanted is certifiably batshit insane, though it never rises (sinks?) to the same crackpot levels. Part of the problem is the miscasting of James McAvoy as a meek office drone who discovers his destiny as a bullet-bending assassin. I like McAvoy, but his American accent is way over-the-top, and his voice-over is one of the most grating I’ve ever encountered. Too much explication, not enough bullet-bending and Jolie-fu. In the action sequences (which comprise at least a third of the film’s run time), Bekmambetov really lets fly, particularly in the penultimate sequence that must surly be the most egregious example of animatronic rat abuse ever committed to film. But then everything gets dragged down again with a lot of malarkey about fate and righteousness, blah blah blah. Really, can’t a girl just sit back and enjoy some ridiculous car (and train) chases and Morgan Freeman saying “motherfucker”?

The 2008 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

To aid you in handicapping your office Oscar pool, here’s my rundown of this year’s nominated animated shorts. Sadly, I don’t think I’ve made a final call on who will be the ultimate winner, though Pixar has yet again risen above the bulk of the pack. Presto (2008, USA) is cute and legitimately funny, but if the Academy voters want some real substance, my guess is that they’ll go with the Japanese nominee, La Maison en petits cubes (2008). No, I don’t know why the title’s in French, either. However, despite the fact that Maison is not my favorite animation style (I’ve never been a fan of shaky lines, hence my intense dislike of Dr. Katz), the story is both complex and touching without being treacly. It interweaves themes of memory, loss, and environmentalism, all with a light comic touch. Between the two, I would personally pick Maison, but it may well be an all-Pixar night, as WALL-E will certainly take home the animated feature prize.

The other nominees don’t come close to matching either of the aforementioned shorts - Lavatory Lovestory (2007, Russian) is cute, but didn’t really do much for me, and certainly didn’t innovate as far as animated style is concerned. The British submission, This Way Up (2008) was technically strong and admirably cheeky, but went a bit nuts in the finale. I found the slight (three minutes) Oktapodi (2007, French) terribly funny, and a good example of how Pixar’s computer-generated animation style has come to define the genre, but it didn’t have nearly enough heft to do much more than produce giggles. I just like animated octopods.

The Music Box packaged the nominees together with “commended” shorts, which I have to assume were runners-up for Oscar inclusion. The first, Varmints (2008, UK) was overlong and sickly sweet, combining the hot topics of environmentalism and cute animals. John and Karen (2007, UK) was one of the funniest things I saw all night, a morning-after exchange between a polar bear and a penguin that I think might have been the biggest crowd-pleaser of the program. Less popular were the animal escapades of Gopher Broke (2004, USA) and the lightweight Bill Plympton exercise Hot Dog (2008, USA). But I really liked the French Skhizein (2008), the story of an unusual encounter between a man and a meteorite. Skhizein would have made a fine Oscar nominee, blending a unique computer-generated style with quirky humor and a sobering finish, but it was probably a bit too dark for the Academy. Also, I imagine that whoever is chosen to present this category wouldn’t enjoy having to try to pronounce the title.