Apart from entertainment the function of movies is to expose the social problems prevalent in society. Many movies made in India and abroad have successfully done the later one. Two questions came in to my mind immediately when I heard about success of Slumdog Millionaire. One was that had this movie been made by an Indian director would it have won so many awards? Other question was that would any bollywood director have made this movie so simple…so realistic?
After hearing so much about this movie I could not stop myself from downloading it from net and watching (I am very much against piracy but it was too long to wait for this movie to be released in India). After watching movie I realized that it was very difficult for this movie to be made as it is in India. Everything looked very realistic and practicable. The way director presented the movie was extraordinary whole credit to him. The many social problems prevalent in our country have been presented in the movie in a very intelligent manner.
It’s not that Indians movies haven’t tried to do this but Indian movies have failed to do so without any extraordinary heroic character. In typical Indian movies lead actor (hero of the movie) does something which looks very impracticable under given circumstances (Few exceptions are there). This movie hasn’t involved any such instances. Story progresses in very simple and practical manner. Nowhere in this movie one can get impression that this is very difficult to be executed in real life (except from the way he answered last question a random guess proved to be correct but this also has probability of 25%; random guessing shows that he didn’t have value for Rs. 10 million he had won).
As far as social problem are concerned when these are shown in an Indian movie this is overshadowed by something else (latest example is that of Ghazini in which very sensitive issue of girl trafficking was over shadowed by eight pack abs and hair style). Many social issues like riots, problems of street children, forced begging, prostitution etc were shown in this movie. This movie must be seen by all radical groups who are often responsible for riots so that they can understand how riots can ruin future of children by making them orphan and in turn making them easy prey to the people who exploit them for begging.
Another problem of forced bagging has been presented in this movie. In city like Mumbai number of street children exceeds the number of cattle, dogs. Everybody is concerned about problem of street dogs but few are showing concern regarding street children. These children are exploited for begging and prostitution. We have laws to prevent these problem but these are seldom followed. I recently heard that any one found giving money to beggar would be fined Rs.1000 in Delhi but would it help us in eradicating this problem? There are many things to be learnt from this movie and accordingly we should act to prevent these problems at least on moral grounds.
Now coming to best part of movie that is background music, it should make all of us proud that an Indian has bagged the award of golden globe for original composition. A. R. Rehman deserved this award much before. He became first Indian to bag this award. All credit goes to his innovative thinking and imagination. He has again proved that he has got the best musical brain among his contemporary’s. Still one question moving in my mind if this had been made by an Indian director then also….? All characters have played their part well.
I have got the answer of my second question but still wondering about the answer of first one…? Are Indian movies ignored at international level or they do not deserve to get awards…? This question may lead to endless debate.
