India in Dilemma Over Academy Award-Winning Film
By Kim Se-jeong
Staff Reporter
After watching the film "Slumdog Millionaire," winner of eight 2009 Academy Awards, Indian Ambassador Skand Ranjan Tayal has fallen into a dilemma.
Because of the film's worldwide recognition, it's a good bargaining chip for promoting his country, yet it contains misleading element he said.
The film tells the story of young man named Jamal Malik, from the slums of Mumbai, who ascends to become a winner of the Indian version of the TV quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
He happens to know all the answers, not because he is intelligent but because of what he went through in life as a slum kid. Every question takes viewers back to how he got to know the answer.
Ambassador Tayal said despite the nature of the film, the extent of exaggeration of the slums gives the impression that Mumbai is full of them with children living in poverty and filth, that the social structure is completely corrupted by violence and the absence of the rule of law and that child labor and abuse are commonplace.
The film has caught the reality of it, but over all, it has blown it out of all proportion, he said.
"That's not what India is all about," Tayal told The Korea Times after viewing the film.
"What does the film make you think about Mumbai?" his wife, Kusum, asked.
Endless maze-like narrow alleys are good hideouts when the authorities show up. Residents of the slum drink from, do laundry in and clean themselves in a river nearby.
Children hang out at a nearby trash heap, and solicit their findings. Sanitation is nowhere to be found and one must go outdoors to relieve himself or herself.
There is a scene in which the young Jamal gets locked in an outdoor restroom.
As he cannot wait to see a super film star who was visiting the town, he chooses to jump into the septic tank and runs coated in human waste and, naturally, its odor.
Kusum, who must have been floored by the scene, emphasized that such acts were no longer typical in the slums.
From a diplomatic point of view, the ambassador thinks the movie has carried more of a negative impact than a positive one.
It wasn't just he who opposed the film. When it was released and was subsequently nominated for Academy Awards and won, controversy arose among Indians.
The New York Times quoted critics claiming it told the story of stunted, shafted slum children in India.
Meanwhile, some Indians have taken the victory as their own.
India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, congratulated the "Slumdog" team, saying, "The winners have done India proud."
Ambassador Tayal said slums are the result of the migration of people into urban areas. The Indian government, in response, has had to set up social welfare projects for those who dwell both in rural and urban areas.
"Children living in the slums shown briefly in the movie have access to free education," he said.
According to the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Center (SPARC), a non-governmental Indian organization working on housing and infrastructure issues for the urban poor, by 2025, half of the world's population will be living in cities, and one billion people will be living in slums.
In Mumbai alone, six million people will live in slums, the group said on its Web site.
The last time an Indian won an Academy Award was in 1982 when the biographical film "Gandhi," directed by Richard Attenborough and co-produced with UK production companies, won eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Ben Kingsley).
"Slumdog Millionaire" had a female Indian co-director, Leveleen Tandan.
The film was based on the novel "Q & A" by Vikas Swarup, an Indian diplomat to South Africa. Ambassador Tayal said Swarup has made a name for himself as the author of several books now, particularly "Q & A."
The film was shot between late 2007 and early 2008 in Mumbai. Later in 2008, the city was the stage for a terrorist attack. In fact, Kusum said the train station seen in the very last scene was the very spot where terrorists started to kill 173 people.