Danny Boyle is one of the brightest new directors today. But he doesn’t command an aura like Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese. A film by him doesn’t guarantee critical acclaim and box-office riches. He’s created a much smaller appeal for himself by tackling strangely diverse subjects. From the flesh-eating zombies of 28 Days Later to the star-savers of Sunshine, from drug addiction in Trainspotting to the saintly innocence of Millions, Boyle’s films make the 52-year-old director seem 20 years younger because his stories are a reflection of modern life. Boyle’s world is our world, its different facets shown from within, always fresh, never repetitive. For him, the simplicity of our daily grind is both exciting and complicated — no need for James Ivory’s period dramas, Ron Howard’s big-budget biopics, or Quentin Tarantino’s uber-cool preaching.  

The genius of Boyle is that Slumdog is not a story about India but a genuinely Indian story. Even more so than Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding or Deepa Mehta’s Water — both relevant, both provocative, but both somehow telling Indian tales to foreign audiences. The only allowance he’s made is using 10 million instead of one crore. With an age-old Indian formula, keeping away from his trademark use of stylized hues, Boyle has left the film true to its Bollywood form.  

Just as Fernando Meirelles’s City of God would’ve been very regular for Brazilians or Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth for Mexicans — because of their long association with mystical realism — for us the story of Slumdog is clichéd. And Gandhi was, too, by being the most-told Indian story of our times. But all four films touched a chord with larger, world audiences, and the stark difference is that while Meirelles is Brazilian and del Toro Mexican, the two mainstream films from India to make an impact in the last 30 years have both been made by foreign directors.  

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