The irony called Slumdog...

Yes its the OSCARS... n yes, the unlikely yet so inevitable has happened! Slumdog literally clean sweeps the men with the golden swords.... Should we be celebrating ?? well....

I saw Slumdog millionaire (hereby and already called 'Slumdog' 4 the sake of the much-needed brevity in my post ) when i first heard that it had won a few Golden Globe awards. And i was like "Huh...? WHAT !?! ... A movie based in mumbai, with Anil kapoor in it won the Golden Globes and that too FOUR of them !" I started to watch it like a dog expecting a sweeeet chewy bone after a fortnight of starvation.. (oh god..this 'dog' thing is getting to me ! ) After all, it had been ages since i had seen an Original, Creative movie with a bit of Indianness in it. Bollywood truly stinks with shameless plagiarism these days....

So i kept on expecting a truly memorable scene or an emotion or an aspect of the story that would look Oscar-Like and would stay with me long after i had seen the final credits..... It never came.
In fact.. there were a lot of loopholes in the way the film had been made.. Exempli gratia :
The movie just had to be made in English due to some reason i cant understand (maybe because that would tag it "Hollywood" and help it get the Golden Globes and the Oscars n all the glittering shit in the world... well-thought i must say, seeing the results!) and the consequence - a slum boy of mumbai switched from Hindi to English and left you with a "HUH ... What just happ.... ??" ... and talked so very fluently in ANGREJI (as a slum boy in mumbai would actually say it) that the foreign tourists featuring in a scene had no problems with their little con guide of the Taj Mahal. Now i wonder what Mr. Boyle was thinking there....
And guess what? The policewalas couldnt speak English as well as the chai-wala, thank god for the realism there. But wait... what about the "&*)^$@^" s ...?? Yup, all the "Galis" were in Hindi! Well done, Mr. Boyle... Looks like you had a tour to India with a Con guide yourself, who taught you nothing but the "@#$^**%"s in Hindi. (We love doing that 4 fun, don't we? Like we tell them u greet a person in India with ****..... ahem.... etcetra... lets not get into that)

So far so bad... i kept switching between seeing a bold bollywood movie with its Hindi abuses and an English Oscar prospect with its Fluent English and well... uhm... pretty good storytelling. There were other parts of the story that made me go - "What the... ??" like if it was actually possible that an overnight celebrity - a would-be-first-millionaire on the show could be swept off outside the studio and beaten up and tortured like a "nobody" the whole night without the media creating public outrage about it... and the part where suddenly, his brother leaves him bolted out and flees with the girl (whom he was leaving out till that part ) . To be honest, i never understood the character played by Mr. Brother, sometimes caring enough to save him from getting blinded, while at times, leaving him for years and running away with his beloved at gunpoint! AND doing an ANGEL at the Climax! Wow... i wonder if he suffered from MPD... anyways...

So why did Slumdog win it all?? Maybe it was a wonderful movie and i'm a complete sucker of a critic... maybe.... but hey, what if it was made in Hindi? would it ever make it to the Oscars? even get nominated? Maybe.. But there's only one potential slot there- "Foreign Language Film" category. So that means.. the only thing that took Slumdog from "Being nominated for ONE category" to "WINNING 8 " was ........ ....... ...
yup, u guessed it- the "Hollywood" tag... the fact that it wasnt a "Foreign Language" Film, that it was made in English, even though that made no sense at all with the script of a Mumbai Slum Boy's Life...

So all of this means - no matter how well made a movie it is, it has to be in English to make it that big at the Oscars. But bollywood is for the HINDI audience.. the Indian audience, majority of which have a single common language- HINDI! Then why do we keep sucking for an OSCAR every year! Why are they called the Ultimate Recognition of Cinema when the categories themselves limit the domain to movies in one language !

Now i know All of us have different taste buds when it comes to movies... but can anyone reading this, say- SlumDog was better than all the other Bollywood movies you've ever seen in your lifetime ! ? ! Yet it gets 8 where none other has got any.... WHY? Personally speaking, if concept and filmmaking is the first and most important critertia for the jury, BLACK was far better than SLUMDOG. Well... what about "Taare Zameen Par"? It never even got into the final line-up of the only category it could have got into! You may have your personal favourites with Bollywood, not necessarily including BLACK or TZP but i don't think many of you put SlumDog above all the Bollywood of your lifetime! Yet... the distinction when it comes to getting the "MAN WITH THE GOLDEN SWORD" ...

The only thing i'm very happy about with the turn of events this oscar night is - A.R.Rahman. Not because the music of Slumdog stands towering above the rest of his compositions. (In fact i would put it somewhere near the bottom of my playlist called "Best of A . R. Rahman ") But because if there is one man in Bollywood, who's always delivered well beyond expectations, surprised us with his creativity every damn time in an industry plagued with plagiarism and composed tunes that will last for a lifetime and beyond.. got what is considered "The Highest Honour" in cinema. I still cant figure out why that distinction w.r.t the title of the oscar but if its that way.. i'm glad the Best Music Composer of India got it...

(imagine somebody like Anu Malik composing for Slumdog.. Gosh...!!! given the hype, and the insanely flooding nominations and eventual awards for Slumdog, even Mr. Disgusting PhotoCopyist would have grabbed an Oscar... :0 )

Anyways , its happened and what its done on the positive side is - show a glimpse of India to the whole world, give a global recognition to the Master- A.R.Rahman's talent .... aaaand filled the whole Oscar-hungry nation with more hope of an Oscar for a truly Bollywood movie sometime in the future! (and taught the whole world some interesting "Ma- Behen ki" Galis too [:D] !)