The Distancer: Sunday, November 8, 2020
DAY 241: Slumdog Millionaire
Happy Sunday, friends! Hope you’ve had a nice weekend.
If you’re like me, the holiday shopping rush has begun … and you can bet that quite a few people in my life are getting books that are not from Amazon! 1 in 4 independent bookstores are at risk of closing by January, and many of them are banking on strong holiday sales to pull them through. Don’t let a cornerstone of your community go the way of The Shop Around the Corner!
If you’ve followed politics over the last 4-5 years with even a passing interest, then you’ve no doubt heard the name Maggie Haberman. Or, at the very least, you've gotten information courtesy of her reporting and not realized it. Here’s a great profile of her in The New York Times about how she did it — and where she’ll go from here.
Finally, brining it back to the reason that this newsletter even exists in the first place — the United States is now averaging an unacceptable 100,000 cases of COVID-19 per day. Hospitalizations and deaths are starting to tick back up, too, just as we head into winter. I discovered the account “Faces of COVID” over the weekend that’s dedicated to finding obituaries of those we’ve lost and reminding us that these were friends, neighbors, people — not just a statistic on the news.
Now, what you came for…
DAY 241: Slumdog Millionaire (available on Amazon Prime and Hulu)
I remember all the way back in 2009, there was a narrative around Slumdog Millionaire as “the first Best Picture winner of the Obama era.” Indeed, it was a markedly ebullient contrast to the prior two Oscar champions, grim dramas The Departed and No Country for Old Men. I’d been concerned over the past few years that the film would feel like a relic of a more hopeful time and ill-equipped to make the transition to a more cynical era.
Turns out, the charm still works! (It definitely helps when you end your movie in a dance celebration.) I think I probably find the film’s framing device, a game of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? where the life experiences of contestant Jamal (Dev Patel) give him a preternatural edge in gleaning the correct answers, a little contrived. But it’s still a clever way for Slumdog Millionaire to give us all the joy of the rags-to-riches narrative without necessarily hitting all the usual plot beats in their usual order. Kudos to screenwriter Simon Beaufoy and director Danny Boyle for making a film that’s kinetic and lively as it cuts between multiple storylines without being confusing or jarring. The film nimbly balances the game, the flashbacks that span the geography and recent history of India as well as the drama that plays out behind-the-scenes as the show’s producers doubt lowly “phone basher” Jamal’s ability to get as far as he does.
Though it has little bearing on the experience of watching the film itself, it is notable that the journey of Slumdog Millionaire to claiming Hollywood’s highest honor is itself an improbable tale. Boyle’s film was more or less left for dead by its distributor and likely headed straight to video in 2008. Luckily, Fox Searchlight saw the potential in the film and managed to get it into fall festivals like Telluride and Toronto. The rest is history — Slumdog Millionaire swept the Oscars, winning 8 trophies, and grossed over $375 million worldwide. Who says life can’t imitate art?
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall