Friday, March 20, 2009

Against the grain

If Slumdog Millionaire deserved the global recognition it got, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas should be accorded no less. Unlike the graphic templates we are used to with films set in and around Nazi Germany, Striped Pyjamas provides us a vantage point unlike most in its genre. Its explorations of human vicissitudes amidst crises open us to possibilities of orientation to human situations without overt reference to violence –despite violence's palpable imprint.

Seen through the eyes of Bruno, the eight year old son of a German officer in-charge of a concentration camp, Striped Pyjamas is an exploration; in a profound sense of the term. Bruno’s love for adventure books inspires him to explore, a childlike instinct which leads him through questions that push him beyond his circumscribed limits. The answers do not seem critical to the screenplay. Rather, Bruno takes you along in his playful yet profound adventure: you skip along eagerly through the woods of discovery, playfully eavesdrop on an adults-only screening, long for atonement after slighting a friend, and even find out that a shower is never always just ‘another’ shower. Pushing one beyond the familiar modernist urge for a neat and structured end, Striped Pyjamas’s motions unsettle popular notions. The resulting ambivalences pry through the in-between spaces that, according to one cultural critic, bear the burden of how we grapple with notions of ourselves and/in culture.

While both movies were released around the same time –Slumdog in January 09 and Striped Pyjamas in November 08 (source: IMDb)– Striped Pyjamas went under the radar. Maybe the current economic climate helped Slumdog sell its rags-to-riches story better.

6 comments:

Calliopia said...

I have Striped on my portable hard disk. A friend gave it to me with high recommendations earlier this year and sounded just like you, "If you watch this, Slumdog totally pales by comparison!" but I still haven't watched it yet. I think the HUGE hype helped Slumdog, and the Oscars of course. And also personally I'm a little tired of Nazi Germany/Holocaust movies and books. Yes, it was a macrocosm in itself but there are also plenty of other human experiences beyond that, and in other settings. Like I loved The Kite Runner (the novel)partly because it presented a culture and world which wasn't your run of the mill, oft-depicted setting but sth otherwise quite fresh and new.

But then on the other hand, like you say, I think we all love a rags to riches story, and always will. Even long after economic crises.

Philo said...

Calliopia: I've noticed your many 'Kite Runner' raves and to be honest, I haven't read it nor seen the screen version. I will definitely add them to my list.

Mizohican said...

Hey, even Indians ourselves are surprised we got that many oscars and many say we dont deserve them, so you are not alone. lolz. Slumdog was a great movie, but oscar material? Nah.

Ps. Make sure you read the book first before watching the flick when it comes to Kite runner. The movie is dwarfed by the book, pretty much like Love story or Godfather - Great movie, but greater novel.

Not much like Jason Bourne series - Great novels, crap movies. :-)

Philo said...

Illu: thanks for the heads-up on KR. On the Bourne series, there was an earlier British production that also had Jacqueline Bisset in it. It was way better than the recent Hollywood production. You should check it out.

Slumdog at the Oscars was a bit like Lagaan at Oscars 2002. Lagaan was no match to No Man's Land (winner, Best foreign film) in every department, except in movie length. Slumdog's credits weren't much greater than Lagaan's but just happened to have a more strategic USP.

Anonymous said...

The best part I like about Slumdog was that it didn't cast the overly-famous, over-dramatic and bitchy (Both male and female) big-budgeted stars of Bollywood, and that was a relief cos' it would've been excruciatingly painful to watch their antics after winning the oscars, the shallow-modesty and fake-sympathies for the people who didn't win... all on the Front Page of newspapers and Breaking News 24/7 on all possible indian channels.. Whew!!
I don't get much time to read nowadays, but I do agree that books are always better than the movies, take, for instance, DaVinci code. It's amazing how the director managed to shove the whole book into 3hrs of cinema, maybe thats why he didn't bother whether the story made sense or not, he probably just assumed the people who watch the movie to have read the book.
I loved the Kite Runner as a movie (haven't read the book yet). Boy in striped Pyjamas is next.. I recently watched August Rush and it was beautiful too..

Philo said...

Blk/red: I agree with you that Slumdog, despite its lack in depth, had a fresh feel to it. Loveleen Tandon (co-director) actually went on record to say that Amitabh Bachan was initially slated for Anil Kapoor's role. O, to name-drop, Loveleen was a senior of mine in our dept. in college. To get back, someone else did suggest August Rush to me too.Hey thanks for peeing on my pole:-0!!