Can win, should win, will win

It's now a little over 24 hours before another batch of little golden statues are handed out to a tearful few in Tinsle Town. Somehow the Oscars have lost the unique sense of excitement over the years - not surprising, perhaps, when winners of the best picture from this century have included 'Crash' and 'Chicago'. Sure, the tradition was always to recognise the mainstream and the safe, the movieland equivalent of the largest common denominator. But wouldn't it be truly exceptional to have a best picture Oscar winner - the one big prize that everyone really wants, of course, the Golden Globes and BAFTAs being mere warm-ups - with a cast entirely devoid of established American/European names, and a story set in a landscape/cityscape neither within the national borders of the United States, nor in the world of hobbits?

In the year that Barak Obama is voted into White House, we've got it: I had been a little weary of the tagline 'The feel-good film of the year' claimed on every poster of Slumdog Millionaire (I suppose I firmly belong to the minority of the population for whom feeling good isn't the only purpose of going into a cinema), but thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. It's subsequently caused much controversy, and the headlining slogan for the anti-SM camp seems to have been 'Povery Porn', which I find hardly justifiable. What, to these critics' mind, should be the textbook method of depicting poverty instead? Or is it the very fact of ubiquitous poverty among the underclass in Mumbai is represented on screen at all, let alone in such dazzling cinematography, that angers them?

Apparently there have been protests in India against the film for such reasons, and this reminds me of what the vast majority of ordinary Chinese (who, at the time, had seen very little foreign cinema apart from the State-approved imports, this being the days before piracy and internet arrived) said about the early works of Zhang Yimou (Red Sorghum, Raise the Red Lantern, The Story of Qiuju, To Live) and Chen Kaige (Yellow Earth, King of the Children, Farewell My Concubine). Why did they always have to tell stories about the endless struggles of the farmers against nature and their fellow men, the corrupted feudal lords and their persecuted underlings, the pervasive poverty and hopelessness of the common people that defined China throughout much of the 20th century? Couldn't they see that it wasn't right to portray this side of China to an international audience - especially since, as it happened, it was only these selected names whose works were always chosen to be screened at the important festivals in the West?!

I've rewatched these Chinese films since moving abroad and have come to appreciate their cinematic achievement without the nationalistic preconception anymore. I should like to think that it's not about me being Westernised - if anything, I've been watching far more Chinese films than I used to - but simply a change in perspective. I have not been to India, but I've seen most of Danny Boyle's previous works, and Slumdog Millionaire certainly carries a lot of his trademarks from the opening frame. It is also easily the most spectacularly shot and impressively acted (the three youngest children probably drew laughters, tears and swoons from many audience at every screening), with an entirely ridiculous but totally uplifting ending. (Takeshi Kitano, take a bow, for that brilliant dance sequence that Danny Boyle has stolen from Zatoichi.) It's not flawless, but then very few Oscar winners have been. The last time a film portraying a similar landscape and society was given the little golden statue was Gandhi in 1983, also with a cast full of faces largely unfamiliar to the Western cinema-goers (Ben Kingsley was hardly a household name then). Slumdog Millionaire deserves to win, and it will.