Oliver Twist is a totally crappy character. He is only loved by the fainthearted readers who are horrified by the infinitely more interesting villains and grimwigs that surround him. For the rest of us the story ends in Fagin's cell — we don't care about the happyeverafter of poor put-upon Oliver because we'd been rooting for the Artful Dodger all along. (Why has no one written the further adventures of AD after his deportation to Australia?)
Dickens' mistake is oft-repeated (Frodo Baggins suffers from mild Oliver Syndrome) and Danny Boyle compounds it with another. The protagonist Jamal is given a destiny in place of a personality. His only discernible characteristic is that he Loves The Girl and the only actions he ever takes are to find her or protect her. So that's nice, but otherwise he is a total nonentity. He has nothing to say and, worse yet, no reason to be so in love with her. She at least is briefly aware there is no reason she should love him either, but this is conveniently forgotten when she is needed for the big fake ending. So once again the bloke to hold our interest is the Artful Dodger, in this case Jamal's brother Salim. Only he faces any real choices, and makes them, moving the story along. And then Boyle goes and ruins that by dispatching Salim, who has heretofore been written as a real person, in an unmotivated and pointless suicide.
As the Oscars approach this is my pick for most overrated film of the year. It sidesteps a real story to pander with fake game show drama.
Fun fact! Elijah Wood has played both Frodo and the Dodger.
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but i've heard so many good things! sigh, guess i'll go watch Happy-Go-Lucky, it's been sitting in my queue for awhile now :)
ReplyDeleteI know, I know, a million idiots are gushing with praise because they love it when a foreign film showcases its home country while imitating Hollywood movies as closely as possible. They're patting themselves on the back for appreciating a foreign film (directed by an Irishman, by the way) while condescendingly patting the Indians on the head for successfully acting like Englishmen. I mean, for Chrissakes the movie is just an episode of Who Wants to be a Millionaire without even the slight benefit of being real.
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