Review: Slumdog Millionaire

***** / *****

"Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees. How did he do it?

A. He cheated
B. He's lucky
C. He's a genius
D. It is written"

Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire is the film world's first globalized masterpiece. This extravagantly eager romantic fable is set in contemporary Mumbai, the former Bombay, but it draws freely, often rapturously, from Dickens, Dumas, Hollywood, Bollywood, the giddiness of Americanized TV, the cross-cultural craziness of outsourced call centres and the zoominess of Google Earth. It's mostly in English, partly in Hindi and is directed by a Brit, with the help of an Indian co-director, Loveleen Tandan. The young hero, Jamal Malik, is a dirt-poor orphan from the Mumbai slums. "Is this heaven?," Jamal asks after tumbling from a train and looking up to see the Taj Mahal. I had the same feeling after watching the first few astonishing scenes: Was this film heaven? The answer, as I watched it again and again, turned out to be yes.

Yes because of what Slumdog Millionaire does - gives the film medium a jolt of cyclonic power - and yes because of what it is: a timeless story of unswerving love that's been married to a madly extravagant Hindi version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Simon Beaufoy's screenplay was inspired by "Q & A," a modest though ingenious first novel by an Indian diplomat named Vikas Swarup, and inspiration is the right word. Nothing else could explain the daring and sweep of Beaufoy's writing, which takes off from the book's premise, leaps from genre to genre with a Parkour athlete's agility, and evokes the rags, riches, horror, hope and irrepressible energy of "Third World" life with a zest that honours "Oliver Twist."

The premise is simple. As a plucky quiz-show contestant - a slumdog underdog - Jamal keeps giving correct answers to obscure questions and winning more and more rupees. This raises the question of how he could know what he seems to know, since the 18-year-old kid has grown up in grinding poverty. For the show's producers, and the police, the answer is he must be cheating. That's the wrong answer, and the wrong question. The right question is whether poverty and knowledge are mutually exclusive, and the answer given by Jamal's example is no, they are not, provided the knowledge is based on experience. This quiet, passionate, whipsmart kid has lived almost every answer he gives; the questions he needs are provided by destiny.

In another filmmaker's hands, this could have been the stuff of turgid melodrama, the story's contrivances laid bare. But Boyle directs with such enthusiasm and exuberance that his energy lifts the film to the clouds. Slumdog Millionaire is incredibly colourful, fast-paced and thrilling to watch as cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg's frequent DP) uses film cameras, digital cameras, even the video function of a small, unobtrusive still camera, and his images come at you like light itself, in waves and pulsing clusters captures. He captures India's vibrancy with a lens that constantly roves Mumbai's teeming streets or hovers overhead, capturing the country's eye-popping colours. Boyle's storytelling is economical; a tale with the sweep of an epic comes in at exactly two hours, set to the evocative rhythms of A.R. Rahman's phenomenal score and the propulsive beat of the hip-hop-infused soundtrack.

It's funny, when you look at the role destiny plays in Slumdog Millionaire, and then at its director's career. Danny Boyle seems to have enjoyed an equally happy fate as the one of Jamal. Many of his previous films, from Shallow Grave through Trainspotting to the beguiling and under-appreciated Millions, are infused with the sheer joy of filmmaking, and all aswirl with ecstatic techniques. A now-infamous scene in Trainspotting is all aswirl with the same stuff that makes for a hideously funny sequence in Slumdog. Still, Boyle had been having his ups and downs - The Beach was a classic downer - and he'd done his most distinctive work on a relatively small scale.

Then destiny, in the form of smart and non-greedy producers (people who still understand that cinema isn't a fucking business, that it shouldn't be made inside fake studios), put him together with Simon Beaufoy's screenplay - the writer's best-known script to that point had been The Full Monty - and the result will make film history. The scale of Slumdog Millionaire is close to cosmic. Jamal's fate transcends the slums; it transcends India. He really is an Oliver Twist for the 21st century, just as his beloved Latika is a multinational mingling of Juliet, Lara and the Vivien Leigh of Waterloo Bridge. In fact, their shared fate plays out in the midst of such crowds as to suggest that every citizen of Mumbai found work as an extra. Jamal and Latika are also two of three Third World musketeers who banded together for self-protection in childhood. The third is Salim, Jamal's brother and the source of a harrowing sibling rivalry.

The children in the film come from Mumbai's slums, and their performances would put Hollywood moppets to shame. Jamal is played as an adult by Dev Patel, a second-generation Indian born in London, still most famous (until now) for his role as Anwar Kharral in E4's fabulous series "Skins." Those who were addicted to that show know that he's a hugely appealing young star, not conventionally handsome, who has mastered the art of suggesting by withholding - you can almost see Jamal's thoughts in process - along with the risky business of putting his character heedlessly out there when love or danger demand it. Great, great things are coming for him.

Then there's Freida Pinto, an Indian model in her first prominent feature role, who's exquisite as Latika, an apparently tragic heroine whose destiny is brighter than she can know. Anil Kapoor, a Bollywood veteran, plays the quiz-show host, Prem, as a supremely smarmy snake. And another legend, Irrfan Khan, adds a lot as a police inspector with a heavy hand but a quick, mercurial mind. A very special mention, too, to all the children who play the three characters at various ages. Particularly touching is Ayush Mahesh Kedekar, who plays Jamal at 7, a little boy who retains his sweetness and innocence amidst the squalor of his existence. After the marvel that was the performance of the young Alex Etel in Millions, Boyle proves once again just how adept he is in working with children.

There's sadness and tragedy within Slumdog Millionaire - starvation, genocide, child prostitution and overwhelming oppression - but there's humour, humanity and dignity as well. Boyle, 12 years after Trainspotting, a film that could be described as the polar opposite of this one, seems to have freed himself here to bring his brilliance as a director to its fullest fruition. This is Boyle's best film to date, which is saying quite a lot; He's made a joyous, fun, and wonderfully accessible film that should be able to be witnessed by everyone at least once. I can honestly say I've never seen anything like Slumdog Millionaire, and I welcomed it with open arms and eyes. In these worsening times for feature films, timidity and mediocrity bickering for bottom honours at the multiplex, Slumdog Millionaire breaks through to the top. It's the best film of 2008. It's a masterpiece.

"D. It is written."