Slumdog Millionaire ... what should movies be like

Should cinema expose harsh truth or should it portray a carefully sanitized picture of society? This question has again come to the fore front with release of Slumdog Millionaire, which on one hand has been nominated for the Oscars and on the other is dogged by controversy with actors like Amitabh Bachchan having panned it (though reportedly, he has retracted those comments).

This is partly because of different expectations that people have from cinema and the role cinema plays in society. Actors like Amitabh, who have been principally entertainers, see the medium as a vehicle of entertainment – some thing affordable and accessible to the common man at the end of a day’s work.

Other film makers have thought and acted differently. Satyajit Ray being the most well known of them. He used films to portray the stark realities of Indian society – the poverty, the corruption and the decadence of a country in transition. Ray was a lot more than a chronicler of penury and hardship; his films made money, won praise and gave Indian films their first visibility on world stage.

Of course Amitabh is not incorrect when he says that “If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations.� There is and always will be a difference of opinion about just which aspect of reality should the creative artist; be it a movie maker or a journalist or a novelist focus on - subjects of celebration and veneration or the objects of ridicule and revulsion.

Using depictions of poverty solely as a means of publicity or getting recognition is definitely pandering. But we cannot get away from the fact that a very large fraction of the billion-strong population of India does not have access to the basic amenities of life, and this is the most obvious thing that will strike an observer from a Western country where these amenities are taken for granted and where these films are getting mileage and Oscar nominations.

Meanwhile both kinds of movies deserve a place in the sun - the typical Bollywood movie that has made Indian film industry the force that it is today and the kind of films that Satyajit Ray and others like him made that initially gave Indian films a foothold in places like Cannes.