, about a lovesick Indian boy competing on the country's version of
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
, last week won Golden Globes for best picture, director, screenplay and original score. It's now being touted for Oscars, the nominations of which are announced tomorrow.
If the film's golden run continues, it will also mark a career comeback for English director Danny Boyle, who first emerged with edgy indie movies
Shallow Grave
and
Trainspotting
.
"It's a long way from where we began, I can tell you," he chuckles, whose previous big-budget sci-fi film
Sunshine
had been a resounding flop, while his last Asian adventure,
The Beach
, also bombed.
"We got 6 million [$16 million] to make the film. Some of it's in Hindi, it's set in Mumbai and there are no Western stars. It was always going to be tricky."
Talking a week after the Mumbai terrorist attacks, Boyle is still a little numb from shock. The uplifting final dance scene in the film, his ode to Bollywood, was filmed in the city's main train station where all hell broke loose.
"To see them attack VT station was incredible - there are rarely any Westerners there. It's usually heaving with millions of Indian people, ordinary not wealthy Indian people. How they could open up there like that is extraordinary."
Filming with hand-held digital cameras and working with a small crew from London, Boyle plunged into the slums of Mumbai.
"The normal thing you do as a film director is you take a bit of life, you stop it, control it, then recreate it endless times to shoot it," said Boyle. "We did some stuff like that, obviously, but it feels a bit fake. It's got that kind of atmosphere thing that you can't quantify. Some of it's sound, but some of it's also visuals. If there's not that randomness about it, you don't believe it."
Interestingly in the
Slumdog
story Jamal (Dev Patel) had been orphaned after his mother was killed by right-wing Hindu nationalists in their Muslim slum. Yet Boyle says such occurrences are surprisingly rare.
"What is extraordinary is that the city lives most of the time in peace and calm, which belies its volatile nature. The surface of it is kind of frenzied and living in fast-forward and full of energy; it's incredibly crowded."
Like so many of Mumbai's poverty-stricken inhabitants, Jamal is resilient. He might fall into a pile of human excrement when trying to obtain an autograph from his favourite Bollywood star, but that doesn't stop him. He shows a similar tenacity on
Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
and is so successful that he is hauled to a police station to be interrogated, just as he is about to be asked the final 20 million rupee question.
The film's clever conceit is that in justifying his answer to each question to the police inspector, he reveals the story of his life.
The Full Monty
scribe Simon Beaufoy, who cleverly plotted out his tale of stripteasing steel workers in a similarly engrossing and emotionally involving manner, freely adapted the screenplay from Vikas Swarup's novel
Q&A
.
"Simon's a bit of an architect," says Boyle. "Everything in the story has a reason, which you're going to find out about eventually. You're in the presence of a proper writer."
As for, well, the poo, Boyle was stunned by the lack of toilets in Mumbai. Though he admits including it in the film fits in with a British obsession he had previously explored when he dunked Ewan McGregor's head down a bog in
Trainspotting
.
"What is it, our obsession with toilets? Most of the nations of the world just take them for granted and just get on with their business. In fact, someone pointed out to me that in this film we've got three major really important scenes in toilets!"
All over the world the millionaire show generally elevates its winners to stardom. In India, where it's hosted by Bollywood's biggest stars (originally Amitabh Bachchan and now the country's number one heartthrob, Shahrukh Khan), it's enormous. "In comparison to the standard of living, it offers the biggest prize anywhere in the world on any version of the show," notes Boyle.
Still it's not the cleverly orchestrated cliffhanger TV show that has made
Slumdog
a breakout success in the wake of
Juno
or
Little Miss Sunshine
. "In the screenplay, Simon created a love story to hang the film on and he made the absolute right decision," says Boyle.
As well, the movie wouldn't have been anything without the right actor to play Jamal. Boyle ended up casting Patel, who had a small comic relief part in the British television series
Skins
, after Boyle's daughter's suggested him.
"Yes, it's the human interest angle, you should always listen to your kids! I got everybody else from Bollywood, but not the boy. All the 18-year-old guys starting out in the business there are too butch. They're working out in the gym because they want to have the hero look for when their time comes - for when they have to rip off their shirts and stand under a waterfall in the Swiss Alps. If I was a young actor starting out in Bollywood I'd go for that look," he muses, "but I wanted a loser. I wanted someone sitting in the chair at the beginning of the film who looked like he was going to be eaten up and spat out by the television game."
When they initially met, Boyle found that Patel had the required "tall, gangly, awkward look" he was after and was relieved that the youngster was serious about acting.
"The biggest problem was his over-protective mum. She came everywhere with him. He was 17 when he made the film; 16 when he auditioned. Obviously she was concerned about her son going into show business, but we had to get rid of her. Not permanently, but you can't have your romantic lead turning up with his mum holding his hand."
Now, with the film's Mumbai premiere tomorrow, the same day as any Oscar nominations are announced, the locals are getting restless.
"What would be wonderful, if anything does happen, the people in Mumbai would be just over the moon," says Boyle. "The celebrations, like everything they do, would be maximum, let me tell you, because they're mad about the whole Hollywood system. Bollywood and Hollywood are always watching each other. So even if nothing happens and we only get mentioned in press reports for Oscars, it would delight them."
Despite their recent tragedy, Boyle says the people of Mumbai have the resilience to come through - and strangely enough that's what his film is about. He says he was greatly affected by his time there.
"Along with New York, where I visited as a lad, it will always be one of those places that grabs you by the throat and says, 'You will never forget you were here.' I love cities like that. They're what I look for now when I make a film."
LOWDOWN
What:
Slumdog Millionaire, likely best picture Oscar nominee directed by Danny Boyle and based on the book Q&A by Vikas Swarup.
When and where:
Opens at cinemas Thursday February 5
Additional reporting AP