Success and Failure In Slumdog

There is a lot to be said both about the successes and failures of the film “Slumdog Millionaire”. In some senses it is a major success being a film with an intriguing and captivating tale woven around a love story and a story of success.  Its plot is similar in fashion to many other tales in which a young and disenfranchised unknown rises to great heights, and falls in love with the perfect woman.  And yet even though the plot may be a bit clichéd, it maintains various unique traits which help set it apart, and make it intriguing to watch.  Of these unique traits the setting for the film stands out most, while many films of this type take place in either fantasy worlds, or worlds similar to our own, Slumdog takes place in an environment of our own world but dissimilar from the one we experience on a daily basis.  India is quite clearly part of the world as we know it, but the slums and cities of India are in such contrast with our own that they seem almost alien at times.  It is at this point that we begin to see some of the failures of the film, because while the pollution, crime, and corruption in India are as bad as the film suggests they are presented in such a way as to make them seem fantastical.  The cinematography, editing, and music tie into the fantastical and nature of the plot and work to make the entire environment seem fictional.  The result of this is that we the viewers overlook the reality of the situation in India, we attribute the awful environments to being the over exaggerated stylizations of any major film.  The creators of this film have no responsibility to raise questions about the situation in India, and it is possible that they had no intention of doing so either.  Overall though whether or not it had been their intention to do so the film may have, if presented differently, brought the situation in India to light.  As it is though it has failed to raise any questions about the harsh reality in India, and therefore as a piece of Third World Literature is unsuccessful.