Dev(iant) D

I had to write this while I was in the middle of Dev D or I will never get it right. Thanks to my son… he wanted me to put something on PBSKids.com and I had to pause the movie.
So yeah I am watching it a little late (the blogs are all old and reviews stale) but I am sorry… I live here in Dallas and I get to watch some of these movies only when they come on DVD.
Ok… to beign with, you need to watch Dev D omly when you are down your second bottle of Napa Valley vintage or whatever else you find comfort in. And I am down on my 5th bottle of Shiner Centennial.
It is as edgy an Bollywood movie can get. You really need to be in that state of mind to get it. Anurag Kashyup wrote in probably in that state. Thanks dude! I will remember him forever as my first ragging experience at Hansraj and the later at the plays of Jana Natya Manch. I can understand how he drew in from his DU experiences of the 90s. And then he uses shots from our college and our Zoology teacher Hardeep Kaur. It suddenly dawned on me, that sitting through her class is the reason behind my liking of the macabre sense of humor that Anurag shows.
This movie is the Kill Bill version of Devdas. A movie that flips every conventional logic, where the songs formed the storyline and dialogs were just incidental. Where a classic Sarat Chandra story was taken to a level where it appeals to all of us deviants. Served any other way and we would have never got it. A MMS tainted, French speaking Chanda, a hallucinating, sex crazed Dev and Chunni as his pimp!
Now I am so desperate to watch Gulaal.

Yeh hai Bombay meri jaan

Is the portrayal of Bombay in the movie Slumdog Millionaire, western voyeurism into third world urban squalor or is it just a story of destiny, hope and exhilaration set against a very sour background? A lot of movie goers will attest to the former. The media was quick to point “Its poverty porn”. If portrayal of the ugly underbelly of the city, titillates the more fortunate, then is the incessant barrage of multimillion dollar song and dance movies that Bollywood churns out, “affluence porn”? Meant to titillate the Slumdog?
In the famous scene where Jamal jumps into a load of crap to be able to meet his matinee idol, most people saw an abomination, an exaggeration that stereotypes the tough life of Bombay. But one of my friends, who is as hardcore a native of the city as anyone can be, ignoring the fancy closed captioning, was actually listening to the dialogue exchange between the man on the loo door and Salim “Mera lendi abhi border mein hain... jaldi darwaja khol”. He pointed it out to me and we were rolling on the floor laughing. That is the kind of exchange that one would listen to if one really paid attention to the city’s background din of humanity. We were amazed at the insight that the movie makers had about the city when they made the movie. Having been a local of the city I do see the humor in the situation and I admire the effort that has gone in to pick such a gem and present it in its right context.
I think Danny Boyle has made a movie of great insight and honesty. In all his interviews he has been very genuine in talking about his feelings about India, Mumbai and the slums. I am sure a lot of it is coaching from the public relations team but how many people really make even that much effort? At the Golden Globe acceptance speech Danny, made a comment that the crew made the movie “dil se” and he went ahead a spelt it out D-I-L S-E. That is genuine.
Slumdog Millionaire is a true bridge movie which I see as a great example of international collaboration in movie making. In the all the glitz of the awards, what really thrilled me is the recognition that the music received. Something that I really think that the Indian movie industry does well. The movie gave A.R. Rehman a chance to create one of the most beautiful scores ever. Of course Roja, Bombay and Dil Se and his latest albums Ghajini and Dilli-6 are great albums but Slumdog is a different genre. It’s a different palette of musical influences - Indian bollywood, Electronica, Rap. And the greater outcome is the Oscar nod for Gulzaar Saab's “Jai Ho”. After all, there is no one on this earth who can write poetry like "aaja aaja jinde shamiyane ke tale"... and there cannot be a better description of Bombay's atmosphere than that.
In an interview, Vikas Swarup, the writer of the book Q&A on which Slumdog is based, was asked “What is the biggest difference between the book and the movie” and he answered “the book is about luck; Danny made the movie about destiny”. And that is what gives us hope, a fair dose of hope, from a movie from the Maximum City that is probably the most feel good movie of the decade.