Unfortunately, I am one of the few select that was disappointed by Slumdog Millionaire. The movie isn’t downright bad, nor are most of the scathing criticisms valid, most coming from a certain set of people (like this one blog might reveal http://www.cinemablend.com/new.php?id=11514) who revel in being the anti-herd, picking and nit-picking with a Indian rag-pickers vigor. The disappointing part is that I was left with a very cold feeling at the end of the movie, one where you don’t seem to have a very strong opinion, a feeling you often encounter at the end of a strictly ordinary Bollywood movie, neither repulsive nor impressive. Just plain, old, cold. That was disappointing, because I was hoping I could announce my arrival in the anti-Slumdog parade, but nothing of that sort. A very typical story, seen by Indians many times over, with keywords like Destiny sprinkled all over the place, albeit adorned with beautiful cinematography and impressive music.

However, credit must be given where it’s due, and it certainly is in the initial parts of the movie, probably culminating with the last scene of the kids together. Thereafter, as a friend put it, the director seemed to have gotten bored with the movie altogether, or that he ran out of money and just wanted to complete the movie and get it done with. However, it seems to me that it is after the kids grow up that the real movie starts, albeit a very ordinary one. The initial part gave the impression to many, me atleast, that this is another Salaam Bombay, but alas it wasn’t one … and most probably it wasn’t even intended to be one. So disappointment coming out of the movie being completely deflated might be misplaced because the expectations would then be quite orthogonal to the intention of the delivered product.

Anyways, as I said … I don’t really have much to write about the movie, not very good, nor very bad … just didn’t manage to leave an impression. Easily forgettable, if it were not for the first quarter of the movie combined with the cinematography and music.

And lastly, if there was a genuinely horrendous (yet screamingly predictable) incident in the entire movie, it would be the American megalomaniac female who after the brilliantly schemed rape of her Mercedes, quips in typical American fashion, ‘…now for some American treatment’ followed by a warm hug to send warm chills through the poor kids cold soul. Shit man … first class bullshit.

I recently read the classic Dostoevsky novel, the Idiot … and has surprisingly remained in my head for more than its due share, prompting me to write a little about it.

I think what the Idiot does to you is much more intangible, than say reading a Fitzgerald where you can marvel in the lyrical quality of the novel. Dostoevsky is certainly not in the genre of poetic writers, where the narrations are obviously more in tune with how the author wishes to influence the reader. Instead, he delves deep into each of his characters, by their musings, confusions, all so real and honest. The Idiot is a little different from his other novels in that, he leaves the reader with an incomplete central character. Incomplete in some of his actions, that often seem perverse, too hard to believe in their simplicity, tending towards the naivete. During and after the novel, this character lurks in your mind, in every action and every deed you do, constantly leading you to draw comparisons to his actions, presumptions on what he would have said in a situation and so on. According to me, he isn’t the ideal character, neither is it the intention of the book to potray him as such, but the fact that he’s unforgettable is an unmistakable success of the author. The success of the novel seems to be in its incompleteness. In the frank and often novel manner of the author of expressing his inability to understand the actions of his characters, almost tending to be nothing more than a story narrated by a third person, someone like us, but with a little more insight and knowledge … and not with the usual arrogance of a writer, whose creations are the very beings he’s writing about. We’re left to our interpretations from there on. Some digresses seem unnecessary, but they fade away as the novel progresses … because you look forward to the inevitable doom, disappointed at every revolting page that it still lurks, the possibility of the tragedy, which to the reader’s content successfully unfolds at the end. Definitely, this wait, the excruciating wait where you know the outcome, the perverse way in which the reader longs for the character to break down, for the ‘unfortunate’ tragedy to strike him, in the form of nature or human, is the essence of the book … where the reader is unscrupulously waiting for the unraveling of this expected tragedy, anything but of the most miserable form … because that would be the experience to end this book with, and that is exactly what Dostoevsky delivers, misery and torment … and it remains with you, lives in your shadows, ever trying to wrench any “good” thought but at the same time putting good naturedness and simplicity in character at a seperate pedestal, only to be dreamed of, and never to be achieved.