Last night I watched Slumdog Millionaire for the first time.
First of all, I just have to say that I finally realized why it won so many awards - great movie! Now, I think it's pretty clear from the get go that Jamal's main strategy for entering Who Wants to be a Millionaire isn't the money. In fact, Who Wants to be a Millionaire is a mere tactic for his main strategy: finding Latika:
Ever since Jamal loses Latika for the first time, his strategy always is to get her back. First he gets a job back where they lost her in the first place and tracks her down in a bad part of town. His tactic is to find one of the beggars that he used to run with as a child and to have him lead Jamal to Latika. After they escape, Latika disappears again, this time with his brother Salim. Now Jamal's tactic is to track Salim down with help from his telephone company, somehow hoping to find Latika with his brother as well.
Salim has a different strategy, however: Money.
Salim will do whatever tactic it takes to accomplish his goal of gaining money: murder, theft, abduction. Two brothers with two entirely different strategies, both with their own tactics, and only one outcome: Jamal and Latika.
Overall, there are tactics and strategies almost anywhere you look, this movie was only one great example of them.
It was a fun movie, but totally a fantasy.
ReplyDeleteOr as one newspaper put it, poverty porn for Americans. I was pretty irritated that it won the academy award, and you might remember my blog about it here:
http://engl243.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/slumdog-millionaire/
But you're right about how the movie tries to represent the tactics of the poor (in a fantastical way, of course), but how is the movie itself a tactic of the rich?
I loved that movie!
ReplyDeleteI never thought of the tactics/strategy in that movie until reading your blog. But it is very true that strategy and tactics are everywhere. And sometimes it is more obvious or more intentional than other times. For example, in a high school setting it tends to be more obvious. Girls will do whatever they have to, for the boys or to be popular. And sometimes it is harder to see, like in the movie you may think at the beginging that Jamal's strategy was to get money and to do that he went on the show.But as you said, he really wanted to find Latika, and going on the show was a tactic to do so.
I really liked this blog. I have seen the movie but i never thought of connecting the tactic and strategy idea to it. It gives me something to think about.
ReplyDelete