Slumdog Millionaire -- dazzling urban visual rhythms

Slumdog Millionaire is NOW PLAYING at the Embarcadero Theater in S.F. I just got home from it and highly recommend it. Here are some thoughts. (I talk about the story line but not in enough detail to be a spoiler.)

I am still dazzled by Slumdog Millionaire, built around the slums of Mumbai. It is perhaps the best movie I've ever seen. Visually very dense in the most intricate sense. The visual equivalent of the poly rhythmic world music I love. The director was able to capture the action within the living city of millions bustling about. The humming activity sometimes seems like a split screen and yet it is not. That is just Mumbai, here there and everywhere. Seething and dancing urban India. And a few charming years the main characters spend in rural areas.

This dazzling city life is but the canvas for a story that evolves seemingly as chaotically organically as life itself. The editing together of the story is another remarkable feat. A nimble touch. No clunkiness in getting from point A to point B.

"Slumdog Millionaire" is about a slum kid who wins Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in Mumbai and is interrogated by police as a fraud because how could a young man raised in the slums know that?-- So the film takes you through each of his answers in the program and shows the intense experiences that imprinted the answers into his brain. Very smart thread for the story. Very organic weaving of events into the mix. And very intense urban busy-ness throughout the film. Multiple scenes of action simultaneously, as happens in a city-- cars driving here, folks running there, train over there, and chase scene in the forefront through the alleyways... Super graphics-- billions bustling in Mumbai nee Bombay. And scenes filmed in the slums which were adjacent to the garbage dump in which our lead character was a wee tyke...

Came straight home after the movie tonight because it was so dazzling. I feel like I've spent one intense week in Mumbai back streets, with some scenes in other cities that flow right in to the plot and then our orphaned slum kids get tossed on to the next part of their lives...

Wherever you are, if it hits a big screen and you're up for a dazzling urban adventure with a sweet storyline melody thread too, I think you will love it.

I'd love to see it again. My eyes feel like a full week of walking through a famous city, Yet there were also those quiet shots-- moments of stilness that slip into some city time. Glances of calm. Or suites of colors that are pleasing in spite of their being corrugated roofing in varied stages of decay... And often the raw city sounds were fed in. Or some very R&B like bhangra tunes pounded away briefly for city set ups... The history of three kids who grew up in the urban underbelly of India. Sheer enchantment.

Yes I do believe I could go on for hours... I am still in awe...