J'Adore: "Slumdog Millionaire"

My only time on the ground in India was 15 years ago, when my Air France flight from Paris to Bangkok touched down in Mumbai, then called Bombay.

Not before or since, have I experienced such an assault on my senses … sensations so profound that they nearly overwhelmed me.

I can recall them vividly this moment … the oppressive, moist heat and the stench that consumed me, when the flight crew opened the door of the airplane. I could not imagine that humanity lived and breathed this air.

This vivid memory returned to me, as I sat spellbound, watching “Slumdog Millionaire” this past weekend.

From the first moment to the last, my entire self and all my sensations became the property of Danny Boyle, who also directed “Trainspotting”.

I felt like a basketball being dribbled from one end of the court to the other, as Jamal Malik, an 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai answers yet another question correctly in his quest to win 20 million rupees, the ultimate prize on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”

The organization of the story line is brilliantly conceived, as real life events become fodder for the right answers in this eternally optimistic, you can do it, if you try film.

My body was still pulsing with adrenalin at the end of the film, and not because of a car chase or bombs blowing up the Taj Mahal. I was drained, because I knew the film was real.

A colleague of mine spent a lot of time in India. I found her to be a True Grit woman like me. And yet she was sent for professional counseling, because she could not deal with walking away from the bodies strewn in India’s streets … stepping over them to get into her chauffeur-driven car.

Returning home from “Slumdog Millionaire”, I read the viewer reviews in the NYTimes and paid particular attention to reviews from India itself. The comments are generally excellent and deny assertions that the film exploits India’s poor.

One consistent thread of criticism is the fact that people were unprepared for the graphic, gritty nature of the film, that the movie trailer is a whitewashed lie. Watching the trailer, I agree.

“Slumdog Millionaire” is a feel-good film in the end, but it’s also oppressive in its pace, the music, and its relentless look at the great contrasts of life in India.

I’ve read no denials that the film contains events that don’t actually happen in India. At the same time, there is no judgement and no accusation. The film ends like a dance from “West Side Story”.

I saw the film with a movie producer, who was unmoved by the film. His response portrayed the same emotional immobility I observed at lunch. If my cortisol levels were surging, as I took a deep breath to clear my head, his blood pressure was below normal.

In the two of us, you saw the range of human emotion that coexists in our universe.

Yesterday I spoke with someone in the middle of us, the polar opposites. He, too, loved “Slumdog Millionaire”, but more within the context of the trailer presentation. Indeed, it is a good story. And I doubt this man is haunted by the gritty reality of the film, as I am.

Because I haven’t returned to India since that one hour spent on the ground, an hour so full of stench that I nearly vomited on the airplane . . trying not to breathe, while fighting for sensory equilibrium … I wondered if modern Mumbai has solved the problem.

A quick Google search says “perhaps”.

42,000 litres of Sanil Supreme deoderant, a swet-smelling herbal spray, will be squirted each day to combat the increasingly putrid stench.

Human bodies are not designed to endure this kind of sensory assault, which is why I think that all of us should see “Slumdog Millionaire”.

Love, Anne