But if we fear it, we’ll see it.

The fourth myth: Indian directors make such movies all the time. It’s because this time a Westerner’s tried it. Really? Movies just like this one, with its frenetic camerawork combined with subdued performances? It is popular to claim that Mani Ratnam, for example, could have made this movie effortlessly. Ha. Look at what he did with Yuva: the most unbelievable Calcutta movie ever, with the most unbelievable student politics ever, and a Sunderbans of white beaches. (Manchester’s Boyle tried to get to know Bombay; Madurai’s Ratnam didn’t think it worth his while to get to know Calcutta.) But, again the fear’s independent of the facts: the fear’s that we are becoming a BPO nation, that we can strive or innovate here, but to be noticed, for credit to be given, a Western name or face will be needed.

We like it because we want it to be what it isn’t. We fear it because we think it is what it isn’t.

SM’s tragedy is that of other Oscar-feted films before it, of Rocky, of Titanic: it is no longer about what it is about. (Particularly ironic, given that it is undoubtedly one of the simplest films to be in this position for a while.) Just as Titanic, the first true giant worldwide hit, became more about the good ship Globalisation, SM will not be the simple, beautifully-shot story they excerpted from Swarup’s book: it will be about the scrappy, urgent, recognisable India that’s building upwards from slums, the “centre of the world”, free, chaotic, dynamic, the White Tiger-esque story that the world needs to hear. If they hadn’t made Slumdog Millionaire, it would have been necessary to invent it.

... contd.