Escape

After wandering around in the thick heat, where flies hovered lazily, as if from invisible strings, I needed to cool off. I ducked into Tushar Arts, one of the few shops here that offers some protection from the dust and heat of the street. Dushar sells a Technicolor array of religious items. Crucifixes hang beside busts of Krishna, and images of the Buddha gaze peacefully at Koranic verse. The shopkeeper, Kruna, who had seen Slumdog two days before, thought the film lacked that essential element of Bollywood cinema—escapism. “It seemed too real, too dirty. When I went I didn’t think that I was just going to see a movie about life here. That’s not very exciting to us.” ~Jarrett Wrisley

Exactly. This is one reason why I think most of the harshest critiques of Slumdog have no effect, because the critics seem to have been expecting Slumdog to remain the gritty story of hardship and exploitation of the flashback sequences throughout the entire film. Its escapist side and conclusion were inevitable, and it is telling that the thing that at least some Indian viewers didn’t like about it was that what little escapism there was did not come soon enough and did not make up enough of the story.