I thought "The Departed" was safe. I thought "The Departed" was sound. I thought "The Departed" would remain, irrevocably, absolutely, the worst best picture winner of modern times, as the cartoonish, embarrassing, over-the-top mess of a film seems beyond reproach. WRONG!
"Slumdog Millionaire," the dull, obsequious, overall perfunctory winner of the 2009 Best Picture, may just steal that title! Then again, the success of the film is, admittedly, entirely understandable, as the Academy has a tendency to reward sentimentality on an international scale.
Call it "The International Effect," the propensity to bestow heaps of unwarranted praise on a work of "art" simply because it uses as its setting a foreign country.
Danny Boyle, the director of "Slumdog" (who also netted best directing honors), self-consciously exploited this effect with his film, translating the same style of film he repeatedly made in the 90s to a Bollywood setting. While a first view of the movie reveals Boyle to be hardly a visionary (his camerawork, especially, is dull incarnate), his very choice of transmitting his working-class theme to Bollywood is cliche at best. We all know Bollywood, it's tendencies, it's excesses; yet, it's international, and even more, it's India, so while Boyle is doing something of little originality, you'll still have the few critics/Academy members who will herald the "vision."
Beyond Boyle's lack of creativity, though, is a truly resentful, manipulative approach to film making. Plucking a collection of unknown actors from obscurity, Boyle's movie reeks of precociousness, the conscious choosing of non-stars to create the appearance of a novel approach to making films. Even worse than this exploitative measure, though, is his cartoonish representation of Mumbai and India. Boyle wants to make a modern film of Mumbai, so naturally, he casts a British actor in the lead part; Boyle wants to make a modern film of Mumbai, so naturally, he'll pepper the remaining parts with some of the more offensive Indian caricatures this side of "40 Year Old Virgin" (note: "40" is a comedy, so in that event, the caricatures work); and finally, Boyle wants to make a modern film of Mumbai, so he'll have all the characters speak English.
India is a fascinating, multi-faceted country, one ripe with poverty, rapid industrialization, a modern Caste system its culture resists yet embraces, and a horribly violent religious conflict with Muslim Pakistan. All of these issues would make an interesting film, just don't go to "Slumdog Millionaire" to experience this.
P.S. The best film of 2008 was, without a shadow of a doubt, "Wall-E."
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