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Who gets more points?

Photo: AP

Looking for a true reflection? Rag picker boys watch as workers prepare a billboard of Slumdog Crorepati in Mumbai

By winning the Baftas, “Slumdog Millionaire” has reassured a nervous British film industry which was alleging that there is a conspiracy against it at the Oscars, so it must win on home turf! Conspiracy? Or is this the first honest admission that perhaps “Slumdog” does not deserve to win at the Oscars?

Perhaps this is the moment to ask why this rather mediocre film is being feted with such fervour when it so alarmingly resembles a much better film made 20 years ago? Bees saal baad — what has changed between “Salaam Bombay” and “Slumdog…”?

It seems as if the gritty street kid, Chaipau, has merely grown up into Slumdog. Curiously, even a young Irrfan Khan is promoted from a lowly letter writer to a cynical cop. There are so many areas of overlap between the two films in script and characters that it makes one wince. Were the producers and screenplay writers of “Slumdog” aware of Mira Nair’s brilliant film? It would be strange if they were not — because the film won the Camera d’Or and the audience award at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival.

“Salaam Bombay” is shocking and real — and completely authentic. In fact, the film is so beautifully shot and enacted — again mostly by the street children themselves — that it clearly puts “Slumdog” in the shade. The comparison is sharper, since the characters are weirdly alike in the two films, as both revolve around a spunky group of young deprived children, up against a cruel world. There is also a tragic love interest who is being groomed into prostitution by an evil pimp, foreigners who are duped of their dollars by savvy street kids, and the film is shot on the streets of Mumbai as a celebration of the spirit of the city. Sound familiar? Was this a mere coincidence?

After all — there is more than enough in Vikas Swaroop’s “Q&A” for the producers to have chosen different material (even, for instance the malevolent missionary paedophiles). Why did they select to script-in almost the same material covered in “Salaam Bombay” —with of course the central device of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”?

Nair’s is clearly the really “Indian” film. It does have a heart: perhaps it takes an Indian director to empathise with those who live in extreme poverty in India — unlike, one could argue, a British director.

This might go against the popular trend which has crowned “Slumdog” as a “great” film. But is this possibly the fatal flaw that has made the film bomb in India? Perhaps this means that it is possible to sell a cosmetic, synthetic representation of India to the U.S. and the U.K. — but not back home.

The Indian viewer is far too savvy. The fakery is reminiscent of that poor boy in “Slumdog” who is supposedly coated in shit — and confessed off screen that it was only chocolate after all.

Unfortunately any criticism of the film is now bundled, by gullible and ignorant British critics, as a reaction against showing slums in international cinema. It only proves yet again how little these guys know or understand of the great industry they all too often dismiss as “Bollywood”. Anyone who has seen the fabulous cinema of Raj Kapoor, Balraj Sahni and Amitabh Bachchan knows that stories of adversity and extreme poverty have been popular with the masses for decades.

So what else are the British critics complaining about? They also raise the bogey of piracy to explain the collapse of the film in India. To begin with — let me confess that I was present at a U.K. conference in London where it was stated that the film would be first released in India, to prevent — yes, you guessed it — piracy. This plan was later obviously altered. One reason could be that Danny Boyle and his producers may have sniffed out that the country that would be kindest to a “feel good” fantasy, faux Bollywood film would be America, just a few months before the Oscars. After all, there is also a fairytale resemblance to Obama’s own story in “Slumdog” — i.e., a clever but poor boy makes it into the super league. The mood in America, psychologically, is with the underdog.

Why did the film get the ecstatic reception that it did in the U.K.? It has, sadly, more to do with the “India rising” story. This, despite the predominant understanding that Indians don’t know how to make films, therefore the Brits have to teach us good cinema. Overwhelming everything is the desire to save the British film industry, which frankly, has been in the doldrums for years.

So I would urge you to look at “Salaam Bombay”, an unquestionably superior film. Even now, Sooni Taraporevala’s script is far more inventive than that of Simon Beaufoy.

In fact, Beaufoy’s script shockingly stumbles against clunky pronouncements. For instance, Lalika’s last line, which is “I thought we would meet only in death”.

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