The punters are betting big on this relatively small movie. It cost Fox Searchlight a paltry $15 million to produce, as opposed to the $150 million that Paramount Pictures put into its 13 nomination-heavy Oscar favourite, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Every single analyst tracking potential winners seems to be backing Slumdog, a film as hybrid as they come — American funds, British director and screenplay writer, Indian actors and technicians. But it’s up against a formidable contender — the all-American Benjamin Button is just the kind of movie that has always belonged at the Oscars. By comparison, Slumdog is a rank mongrel.

The thing with Slumdog Millionaire is this: given the multiplicity of ownership, most viewers around the globe, including those judging the movies, are not quite sure where their loyalties lie. The primary stakeholders in this film are from different continents and from wildly differing nationalities. Customarily, money and tech-support is split between co-productions. But with Slumdog, those who are visible on screen are all Indian (even lead actor Dev Patel, who’s technically a Brit, is of Indian origin); the locations are all Indian, and the spirit of the film is completely, indubitably Indian.

In other circumstances, Slumdog would have been competing in the ‘Best Foreign Film’ category, because as far as the Western audiences are concerned, one-third of the film is in a foreign language — Hindi. But Danny Boyle’s first ‘Bollywood’ film is a marvel in more ways than one. It has earned its producers more than twenty times its cost in high streets which usually fete Hollywood films. This is not a fringe film, it is a roaring, raging box office triumph.

Director Danny Boyle

Boyle brings to an essentially Indian story (written by Indian author Vikas Swarup) a British detachment —sometimes you need outsiders to do a neat inside job. In all the brouhaha in the Indian media about how this is a film that presents dirty, stinking India to the world (really, how dare they show little kids defecate, and jump into human excrement), what has got hidden is that it is only a movie. Boyle and screenplay writer Simon Beaufoy didn’t rub their hands in anticipation at the thought of the dirt and the poverty, and the slummy aspects of the novel: they looked at it as a potential entertainer that would cross over. And that’s exactly what it turned out to be.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, on the other hand, is a handsome film which works very hard at presenting astounding special effects, which are integral rather than peripheral to the story. Based on an F Scott Fitzgerald short story (can’t get more American than F Scott), it’s about a baby born old, and how, as he grows older, actually gets younger! He first meets the love of his life when he is a young boy who looks like an old man, and they come together when they are just the right age. Brad Pitt is superb as Benjamin Button; the locations are first rate, and the special effects completely mind-blowing.

But that’s just the trouble with Ben. He’s the product of so much technical wizardry (how, just how, did they get a baby to look so, well, old — wrinkly face, knobbly knees, gnarled hands?) that you sometimes forget to see who he really is. And the romance between him and his Daisy, played by Cate Blanchett, seems curiously hobbled by the fact of this reverse ageing. He leaves their child and her, arguing that she won’t be able to bring up two babies at the same time. When you look at Brad and Cate (she too gets very, very old), you are actually applauding the skills of those guys behind the scenes who’ve made them look the way they are meant to be, at that moment in time.

Slumdog Millionaire is all heart. Yes, the tech specifications here too are dazzling. The sequence of the little kids racing down the streets, right in the beginning, sets the tone: it’s breathless, bravura cinematography, which hurtles the film along, stopping, and starting, as much or as little it needs to.

Whether it wins everything, or something, one thing is clear: it’s set in motion what we can call, for want of a better word, The Slumdog Effect. India is now on the world movie map — not just as a go-to place for picking up some exotica (co-incidentally, Benajmin Button has a couple of India sequences with Pitt in a bandana on a bike, in search of himself ) — it’s a place where award-winning movies, as well as world-class talent, can be mined.

Look into a crystal ball, and this is what you will see: great things for those who were part of the movie. For some purists, A.R. Rahman has never bettered Roja. Maybe, maybe not. But there’s no doubt that post Slumdog, Rahman is someone Hollywood moguls are going to start warring over, if they haven’t already. Latest Indian poster-girl Frieda Pinto (she plays Dev’s love interest) is gracing international magazine covers.

Anil Kapoor, who plays the slimy game show host, will get a second wind both at home and abroad, where he will finally get the parts that will stretch him as an actor. Irrfan Khan, who’s already a name amongst those with a discerning eye, will add to his international CV, and the equally talented Saurabh Shukla, the corpulent cop, will also get his eye in.

Not a bad haul, huh?

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