Fox ha estrenado Slumdog Millonaire en la India en 351 pantallas. En su primer fin de semana recaudó 2.2 millones de dólares, convirtiéndola en la tercera película occidental más taquillera durante los primeros días de estreno (después de Spider-Man 3 y Casino Royale). Los críticos indios en su mayoría la han valorado positivamente, pero según Time muchos indios de a pie no se sienten atraídos por una película que no muestra nada que no sepan. Para la audiencia occidental, en cambio, se trata de una nueva realidad.
Copio debajo las reacciones de algunos críticos indios. Destaco los fragmentos más relevantes, vale la pena leerlos si os interesa la película.
Nikhat Kazmi en The Times of India:
FORGET the twitter about aggrieved national sentiment. For, Slumdog Millionaire is neither poverty porn nor slum tourism. No, unlike what the desi nationalists' blogosphere claims, it is not a case of the infamous western eye ferreting out oriental squalor and peddling it as the exotic dirt bowl of the east. No, Slumdog Millionaire is just a piece of riveting cinema, meant to be savoured as a Cinderella-like fairy tale, with the edge of a thriller and the vision of an artist. It was never meant to be a documentary on the down and out in Dharavi. And it isn't.
Sudish Kamath en The Hindu:
The point is that Slumdog is no ordinary masala film but it pretends to be one and almost convinces us that it is a product Ram Gopal Varma and Fer
nando Meirelles put together in a hurry under pressure from producers who wanted them to make something like “Satya”, “Company” and “City of God” all in one movie.
Many of our arty critics here may even be tempted to call its outing at the Globes a fluke because of the “lack of realism or logic”, but that’s only because we are desensitised and even under-whelmed by the clichés and chaos of Indian cinema.
But for the rest of the world, it’s everything they almost knew about India and its cinema told to them in a way they could not have ever imagined. It’s seemingly candid, energetic and edgy, raw and reckless.
Manhola Dargis en el New York Times:
In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker’s calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit (or, better yet, a moral tale). In the past Mr. Boyle has managed to wring giggles out of murder (“Shallow Grave”) and addiction (“Trainspotting”), and invest even the apocalypse with a certain joie de vivre (the excellent zombie flick “28 Days Later”). He’s a blithely glib entertainer who can dazzle you with technique and, on occasion, blindside you with emotion, as he does in his underrated children’s movie, “Millions.” He plucked my heartstrings in “Slumdog Millionaire” with well-practiced dexterity, coaxing laughter and sobs out of each sweet, sour and false note.
Renuka Vyavahare en India Times:
Danny Boyle’s immaculate encapsulation of Mumbai without diluting its essence is what makes Slumdog an absolutely brilliant film.
Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle makes Mumbai look beautiful inspite of showing the shadiest of slums, asylums, filthy sewage and garbage disposal places of the city! It works because Anthony not just captures the locales but also manages to catch the sound, smell and pace of the city which keeps moving in spite of all odds. It shows victory and triumph of human spirit with a backdrop of tragedy and in times of acute poverty which makes it a feel good film.
Poorna Shetty en The Guardian:
Personally, I feel Boyle's depiction of Mumbai is spot on. Not only does he capture the human aspect of the slums and the irrepressible energy and life force of the place, but in short sequences featuring the call centres or the high rise buildings emerging from the ashes of old shacks, the film-maker shows us a breathing snapshot of the city that is always stripped of its warmth when depicted in the news.
Subhash K. Jha en Bollywood Hungama:
Slumdog Millionaire is Trainspotting on steroids. It's a beefed-up look at the scummy side of Mumbai, bewildering in its obsession with discovering life in the chawls of Dharavi (curiously the protagonist Jamal is referred to as "the boy from Juhu") as being a facsimile of that drain-inspector's report which Mahatma Gandhi had discovered American journalist Katherine Mayo's account of India in Mother India to be. Slumdog Millionaire is worse. It looks at Mumbai as a swarming slum of sleaze sex and crime with characters who seem to have jumped out of Rakesh Roshan's and Manmohan Desai's cinema bruising their deep-focussed emblematic quality while making this huge global leap from 'Bollywood' to 'Hollywood'. After seeing Boyle's much talked-of film it's crystal clear why this murky and squalid portrait of Mumbai has the Americans preening in delight. (...) This isn't the 'real' India. This is India as seen through the eyes of a Westerner who's selling desi squalor packaged as savvy slick entertainment.
Soutik Biswas en BBC News:
I have no issues with Boyle's cheery depiction of the resilience of slum children and the sunny side of slum life: it is part of the unchanging popular oriental stereotype of poverty equals slums equals dirty, smiling children. Been there, seen that. (...)
My quibble with Slumdog Millionaire lies elsewhere. The film doesn't move me.
I suspect what Boyle tries to do is a Bollywood film - the dirt-poor lost brothers, unrequited love - with dollops of gritty realism. But at the end of it all, it is a pretty callow copy of a genre which only the Indians can make with the élan it deserves.
The realism skims the surface, and in spite of some decent performances, style dominates over substance. And the film does not grip me in the way, say, the story of the life in Rio de Janeiro's favelas in the 2002 Brazilian crime drama City of God did.
(Foto: joelnewel)
