Winner of eight Academy Awards (including the Best Picture and the Best Director awards), seven BAFTA awards, four Golden Globe awards, and numerous other recognitions – Slumdog Millionaire. The story of the movie’s journey from an almost has-been to being one of the most feted movies of the decade, is no less a rags-to-rajah story than Jamal K. Malik’s! Yes, this was the movie that no one saw as being commercially viable, the movie that was almost released straight to DVD, the movie that no one gave any chance at winning.
But there was one thing that the movie shared with its lead protagonist. It’s called spirit. Even if we forget (and forgive) the exotic portrayal of the natives, poverty, porn, the cutting edge cinematographic techniques, the edgy screenplay; the one thing that shines through is the sheer universality of the story of the rise of an ordinary man through sheer grit.