Word: slumdog
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...those films offered a British view of the subcontinent and its people. Slumdog has no Western intermediary onscreen to explain the native folkways to the international audience. Slumdog's major players--three sets of three kids, playing Jamal, Salim and Latika at different ages--are all Indian (though Patel was born and raised in Britain). Even if redemption awaits Jamal, the violence he and Salim witness, or perpetrate, is as gritty as that in the Brazilian urban classic City of God (2002). And with a third of its dialogue in Hindi, Slumdog would come closer than any top Oscar winner...
Little Mr. Slumdog...
...what if you made a great movie and nobody saw it? When Warner Bros. (which is owned by TIME's parent company, Time Warner) folded its "indie" arm last year, Slumdog was suddenly without a U.S. distributor, and producer Christian Colson was told the film would be shelved. The parent company could have just sat on it--as Colson explains the industry logic, "It's better to let a film die than to have someone else turn it into a big hit"--but Warner Bros. "did the right thing" and let Colson show it to other indies. "Fortunately and extraordinarily...
...Slumdog is one of those out-of-left-field, are-you-kiddin'-me? kinds of movies that surprises everyone," says an industry insider who has worked on Oscar campaigns and spoke on condition of anonymity. He thinks the movie's own history will help it win over Academy voters. "The thing about the Oscars is that backstories count. In Slumdog's case, it was this little film in Hindi that lost its distributor. You tell this story to a producer, who's used to films not getting made or appreciated, and they're going to say, 'Wow, that story...
Being a hit in North America doesn't guarantee the same reaction in India. Slumdog opened in 350 theaters Jan. 23 and did fairly well--the third largest non-Bollywood debut, after Spider-Man 3 and Casino Royale. But India is one of the few nations to prefer local product to Hollywood blockbusters, and so far it has proved a tougher sell to the mass public than to U.S. audiences...