Slum Dog Millionaire
People will tell you Slum Dog Millionaire is a movie about love, and poverty, and karma, but what it really is, is a movie about truth. The main character is a young man who has made his way onto a game show and against all odds is poised to win the grand prize of twenty million rupees. But he is a boy who grew up in the slums of Bombay (now Mumbai) a slum dog, with no parents and no education, and no one believes he could possibly know the answers to all the questions he has been asked and answered correctly.
Before the final show they have the local police haul him off to find out how he cheated. He is beaten and tortured, and he talks, but he doesn't say what they want or expect. The police captain is mystified and intrigued, and begins to listen. He asks the young man about each question and how he knew the answer and as he tells him, the story of his life unfolds.
The telling of the story is riveting, it's funny and frightening, beautiful and heartbreaking, not because he seeks to make it so, but because he doesn't. He tells it without criticism or judgement, in the moment, no looking back or forward, reacting to whatever is placed before him and following wherever it leads, and his innocence, the innocence of childhood, of all of us at one time in our lives and still buried in our hearts, is raw and piercing.
The young man knows that everything in his life has led him to this moment. He doesn't know why and makes no attempt to attach any meaning. He only knows it is true. It is his story and he will not disown it, however sad, or painful, or humiliating, however difficult or uncomfortable it is for other people to hear or acknowledge.
To do so would be to disown himself, and it would be to disown his mother who was murdered, his brother who protected him, the girl he loved who was used by everyone, his fellow slum dogs who suffered, and even his enemies who were living reminders of the alternative. They all were real and had a story. They all mattered. Lose his story, and he will be lost.
The other characters have already disowned their stories or are at some stage in between. The crooks who gave up a long time ago, the brother who did what he had to but who couldn't forget, the successful game show host who cares only about himself, the police who have become hardened and the young girl on the verge of succumbing, of giving up all hope and belief and permanently burying the beauty and promise that comes into this world with all of us.
We who have been lucky enough to be born in a different place and time are faced with the same choice, we just lose ourselves in the more civilized ways of our own unique environment; habits, addictions, distractions, success, possessions, negativity, judgement, these are how we lose our truth and our way.
We all have a story that is beautiful and heartbreaking. We all have a truth. Every life matters and everyone's truth deserves to be acknowledged and respected. When we allow for the humanity of others, we allow for our own. When we deny it, when our hearts and minds are blocked by hurt and fear and we refuse to see and tell our own truth, we refuse it in others.
Slumdog Millionaire is the story of the life of one inconsequential human being in a sea of inconsequential human beings. It is everyone's story.