Right Up My Street

There's extra training for MD this morning. Walking the plank, recalls over some small hurdles and running around some poles. After which he still has some energy left for a vigorous ball session on the park.

We come across an odd but appealing sight whilst on the cold and frosty park. There's a girl involved in what appears to be a genuine photo shoot. Unfortunately, it's a touch chilly and she's being photographed half-naked. Brrr. Although the hot breath from the large crowd, that has understandably assembled, might warm her up. I assume it's a genuine shoot but fair play to the male photographer for pulling it off if it isn't.

I'd quite like to watch some FA Cup football on TV but as usual ITV has picked the most uninteresting games possible. So I also miss the draw for the next round but find out later that in the unlikely event of us winning the replay against Forest we'll be playing at home to Manchester United again. Not really any motivation is it?

In the evening we're at the cinema. 'Slumdog Millionaire' has been billed as the 'feel good movie of the decade', which, as far as I'm concerned, is the kiss of death. I usually cross to the other side of the street and avoid anything remotely 'feel good'. Doom, gloom and depressing is my thing. The trailers also tried to put me off the film but then trailers usually do but I'd read some great things about the film, so I persevered with my intention to see it.

Jamal Malik is an uneducated young boy from the shanty towns. He works as a chai-wallah in a Indian call centre and he somehow flukes his way onto the Indian version of 'Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?', where despite being patronised by the show's host he gets question after question correct because his real life experiences, shown in flashback, give him the answers. They are also asked, conveniently, in the same order as his life story... which is just one of several liberties the plot takes, such as how did a poor boy from the slums who spoke only Hindi for the first half of the film learn to speak English so well? But we'll gloss over them.



As the show ends for the day, with Jamal one question away from the big prize of 20 million rupees the local police arrest him and accuse him of cheating. The officers don't simply question him though they use various horrific means of torture, suffocating him in water, electrocuting him etc etc, to try and extract the 'truth' from him.

So as you can see, so far, it isn't remotely 'feel good', so it scores heavily with me on that score, and it doesn't get any more upbeat. In fact, at times, it's very disturbing. There's a lot of violence and abuse in the film, most of which is towards children. His mother is bludgeoned to death by anti-Muslim extremists' right in front of his eyes. Jamal tangles with a beggars' racket, whose perpetrators blind and maim young children to increase their begging potential. Amongst all this, he falls for Latika, a girl he is destined to love and lose, several times over. Having escaped the racketeers, he and his brother Salem return to rescue her from the jaws of forced prostitution. Whilst Jamal stays relatively on the straight and narrow, Salem has ventured into the underworld and becomes a gangster. Salem shoots dead the leader of the beggars' racket and rescues Latika. Hurrah. Cheers Bro. Then he tells Jamal to get lost, deflowers Latika himself and then gives her to his boss....



I've never been to India but I'm not sure the tourist board will be terribly happy with this film. It doesn't do the country any favours, showing a country, that has one of the world's most successful economies, as a thoroughly depressing, morally bankrupt place, dominated by corruption, even on quiz shows. Whether this is an accurate reflection or not, and I assume not, it's still a cracking film and of course there are plenty of nasty films about western culture around.



There's humour too and shades of director Danny Boyle's Trainspotting as a young Jamal dives into a public latrine in order to meet a Bollywood actor.

The ending was a little disappointing. Having survived the brutal police interrogation and been reunited with Latika, who in another plot hole has, despite being a 'kept' woman, somehow learned to drive. Jamal should have gone on the show for the final question, stuck two fingers up at the obnoxious host, who even gave him the wrong answers, and said 'F*** you, I'll take the money'.



To sum up. Pure fiction, not at all feel good but right up my street. Oh and I thought everyone knew the names of the Three Musketeers?

After the film we head off for a gym session where I struggle to get up to my usual pace on the treadmill, even when L goes on the stepper right in front of me, or perhaps that's the problem. My rowing is good though, a storming 1000m.