Slumdog Millionaire

Watching this movie was very much a cross-cultural experience for me. Prior to seeing this I had little understanding of anything that occurred in India apart from the Taj Mahal, the beautiful fabrics, and that areas of poverty existed. The plot line of the movie was fascinating, thrilling, and yet painfully eye opening to the kind of life that exists just halfway around the globe.

One thing that stuck out about the geography of India was the fact that whenever the characters traveled between places, each area was so drastically different, yet each area had the common element of extreme poverty. There was the rural slums where the boys lived with their mother, the orphanage in the jungle, the Taj Mahal, and then the city with tall skyscrapers. In each of these places poverty was evident, because their were always orphaned children and slums of some sort. It was interesting to see how much more crowded India appears to be than even the busiest of cities like New York.

Looking at the cultural side of things there were also some distinct characteristics. The gap between the social classes in India was much more drastic than the gap in the United States. There did not seem to be much of a "middle class." There were the extremely wealthy gang leaders, and the poor people of the slums. Everyone else seemed to fall somewhere into a hierarchy between the two extremes. The economy in India also appeared very strained in the movie. So many of the buildings that they stayed in were either unfinished or abandoned. This is probably due to the lack of distribution of wealth that was conveyed in the movie.


Everyone seemed to be concerned with making money. Those who had it, wanted more, and those who didn't have it saw it as their way out of the slums. That probably also explained why "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" was such a popular show. At one point Jamal asks Latika, why people like to watch the show. She explains that it is an escape, and she is right! It is the one hope that the majority of the people of India have to turn their lives around. They do not have a voice if they are poor. This is especially true for the women of India, who seemed subject to the highest bidder, as it was in Latika's case.

I am glad to have seen this movie, but I am also troubled by the amount of hardships that the people of India live under every single day. It was interesting to see what Jamal and Salim did to earn money as they grew up, like managing a toilet or leading fake tours. They never seemed to stop and feel sorry for themselves. Whenever they met a dead end they simply looked around for a different avenue, and then set off whole heartedly down that new path. Slumdog Millionaire was a very powerful and great movie, but one in which the viewer needs to be ready to see the harsh realities of the world that we live in.