Danny Boyle
The Millionaire

THE MILLIONAIRE

How beautiful, it's snowing!!! Friendly remarks with an anti-snow flavor, stupidly not mounted or chains left at home, are seasoned with bitter Merry Christmas wishes. Then it rains on top of it, and then salt. The big, tough kind, like shovels, heavy and ohhhissa everything painfully returns to normal. Just two days and the handkerchiefs of snow fall narcissistically and pompously, even more copiously than before, and then water. The armed concrete of Christmas gray color compacts and shoveling becomes particularly pleasant considering that we are almost -10 away from the anniversary of the birth of baby Jesus and thus from the queues in shops for the heartfelt gifts to be bestowed with fake enthusiasm to relatives and acquaintances. No, trust me, this weekend I would have gladly stayed far from this chromed and black keyboard of my pc. I had already prepared everything. The orange snowshoes, the trip with map and report, the supplies in the backpack, and above all, I had promised my red eyes, tired of always being glued to the pc, wide horizons on which to quench themselves. Nothing. Avalanche risk 5, and as a result, I am here, locked inside my house, disappointed, frustrated because Monday morning is waiting for me, and I haven't recharged my batteries. A trip to the city??? Are you crazy??? There are the markets, the very sad Christmas markets that the bees (tourists) on the hunt for honey (mulled wine and atmosphere) must visit, enduring miles of queues on the highway. For what? To see 25 wooden houses in the square offering gift ideas; the same ones for 5 years with cheerful music pumped through the speakers. And then there's the fair with the stalls, the exaggerated lights, and the crowd, all under the rain. For a cold one like me, this setting is death by boredom, and honestly, I don't feel like going out today and cursing your God because I can't find parking!! I need to write, decidedly.

I read a lot. I find it relaxing, especially while I rest my feet on the Swedish stove that almost scorches my socks while it crackles. Then in the evening, I like to know what's happening in the world without watching half-figures on TV, but by crumpling the newspaper and smelling the scent of the ink. On Fridays, I often read the section dedicated to new movie releases, and this time my eye falls on "The Millionaire." Not so much for the score or the adjectives used, but for the story. It's a feel-good fairy tale, and as such should be taken, in which India and the life of the protagonist (Jamal) are recounted through the answers of the quiz "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire". The music and scenery are the same worldwide and instead of the reassuring Jerry Scotti, there's a bastard and sadistic host, but the environment is familiar to us, and it's a pleasantly strange feeling. And from that seat starts the life of Jamal. The setting is truly original and spot-on, and question after question, we rise from childhood to adolescence with continuous and deliberately obsessive flashbacks.

Boyle with a schizophrenic direction, equipped with continuous changes of pace, reveals to us a dangerous, very poor India full of inequalities and conflicts where our hero and his brother (Salim) have adapted, surviving as best as they can, while searching for his lost great love (Latika). Question after question, he rises in status, and Jamal is no longer the poor clerk but a television celebrity that the public wants to see win as they identify with him. A troubling figure capable of attracting the ire of the most envious and suspicious because a "cockroach" cannot win a game so difficult. With driving music, moments of pure action alternating, with brutal editing breaks, to reflective pauses and romantic illusions, the minutes fly until the last longed-for question from which the movie started. Shall we light it up? India is on the street cheering for him.

It's not the usual actors that make this film brilliant and successful, but the pace, the soundtrack and the compelling, dreamy story created by the director who tells us about a country and a life in 15 questions.