The rollicking wish-fulfillment film “Slumdog Millionaire,” nearly dumped into the marketplace last year as a direct-to-DVD offering, fulfilled its destiny Sunday at Hollywood’s Kodak Theatre, taking 8 out of 10 Academy Awards for which it was nominated, including best film, best director, best adapted screenplay, best cinematography and best score.
Even before its big night, Danny Boyle’s film had grossed more than $160 million worldwide, a little more than 10 times its modest production costs. And for the first time since “Oliver!” 40 years ago, a rags-to-riches crowd-pleaser about an orphan overcoming the worst sort of human venality, ending with a big dance number, left the Oscar ceremony with a best picture statuette.
So today off I went to view Slumdog Millionaire, just to see for myself, the best picture. After viewing this film, and yes it was very good, I wanted to present to you the story of survival, because the slums, maybe unknown to Americans are stories of survival, as Slumdog Millionaire illustrates.
What, exactly, are slums? Some, especially in the developed world, are once-affluent neighborhoods gone to ruin; others were once public housing. But most are gigantic, tightly packed concentrations of flimsy shacks and shanties that rural migrants have built on the outskirts of cities—what the UN calls “vast informal settlements that are quickly becoming the visual expression of urban poverty.”
Most of these settlements are in the developing world. Of the 924 million slum dwellers worldwide in 2001, 554 million lived in Asia, in such cities as Mumbai and Kolkata in India and Karachi in Pakistan. Another 187 million lived in Africa, in places like Cairo, Durban, Johannesburg, and Nairobi. And 128 million lived in Latin America and the Caribbean (famously, in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo). Only 54 million were in developed countries.
Here is a look into the Dharavi Slum in Mumbai, where the movie was filmed:
Meantime, the slums encroach on the doorstep of one of Mumbai’s most wealthy suburbs, Andheri, sometimes referred to as Mumbai’s Beverly Hills. It is where Bollywood’s top actors and producers live, and where we met Johnny Lever, one the country’s most popular comedians, who has acted in more than 300 Bollywood movies.
Lever was born and raised in Dharavi, where as a child he scraped a living for his family by mimicking movie stars. He had no formal education and could not speak proper Hindi (he spoke the street slang of the slums), but his impersonations and song and dance routines eventually drew the attention of the real Bollywood.
"If you have talent, nothing can stop you," he told me. "You can get out of the slums."
Ahire isn’t so sure. "I realized my dream," he told me. "I became a doctor." But for most of those living in Mumbai’s teeming slums getting out of the slums remains just that – a dream. The only key is CAPITALISM, FREE TRADE, EDUCATION, & PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS, the same keys that developed the greatest nation and economy on earth, USA.
-Lex Rex
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