Bollywood, not Britain should be the star (From Asian Image)

Bollywood, not Britain should be the star

4:07pm Tuesday 24th February 2009

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"Hooray for Bollywood" rather than "The British are coming" is the message that should be taken from the 81st Academy Awards.

For longer than Kate Winslet has been waiting to get her hands on an Oscar, the industry has looked at the phenomenal success of Bollywood and wondered how it could grab a piece of that action. Britain, in the shape of director Danny Boyle, has shown how.

In mixing the fairytale style of Eastern cinema with narrative grit and Western production standards, Boyle created a movie that worked in the arthouse and the multiplex, a genuine crowd-pleaser of the kind that Hollywood used to produce by the dozen, but rarely seems to manage today.

advertisementIt is Boyle's bizarre but brilliant mix of styles that has made the success of Slumdog Millionaire so remarkable.

How, as many have wondered, can you describe as feel-good a movie that features child torture? Isn't there something wildly tasteless in Western audiences feasting on Mumbai's appalling poverty?

Such reservations, though valid, miss the point of Slumdog. Boyle's film has its horrors, but the overwhelming message is one of hope. Jamal (Dev Patel), the orphan who grows up to be a contestant on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, is a survivor. He takes everything that life throws at him and bats it right back.

Boyle confirmed his reputation as one of cinema's more lovable characters with his Tigger impersonation on winning best director. Before Slumdog, few had a bad word to say about Boyle, odd in an industry that puts back-stabbing next to breathing. The beloved son of an Irish labourer and a dinner lady didn't have a slumdog upbringing, far from it, but he has made it to a place few working-class kids manage. In the movies at least, life can still imitate art.

Boyle's greatest strengths as a director are his abilities to innovate, collaborate and spot talent.

In all the awards ceremonies he has attended of late, he has made a point of bringing his cast of relatively unknown actors into the spotlight with him. None of them received an Oscar nomination for acting in the film. Indeed Slumdog's victory was only the fifth time in 50 years that a film won best picture without any similar acting nominations, repeating the feat of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003), Braveheart (1995), The Last Emperor (1987), and Gigi (1958).

Now that Boyle has discovered the Bollywood- Hollywood gene, we can expect clone wars to begin, with plenty of Slumdog-style pictures following. Spielberg is already ahead of the game, having signed a deal last year with India's Reliance ADA Group.

Dev Patel in particular must now be hoping for the sort of rocket boost to his career that Boyle's Edinburgh-set Trainspotting gave to Ewan McGregor and Robert Carlyle. Boyle makes great movies, but he makes stars as well, the city of Mumbai now being one of them. Although the Indian city didn't figure in the Oscars as such, the Boyle touch has ensured its place in the movie universe in more interesting ways than could have been hitherto imagined. Hooray for Hollybollywood.

By ALISON ROWAT The Herald

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