Slumdog Irony

On this eve of Christmas eve, I'm home with the cats, sick with a headcold and pampering myself such as I can,

...smoked salmon and toast, a nice Reisling, hundreds of white christmas lights strung around the room, chocolates...

and I'm about to watch Slumdog Millionaire.

For the first time.

Yes, yes, I've never seen it. I miss a lot of films because I don't want to see the dubbed version first, and the original only stays in the theater for a week (if at all). But there was this great sale on DVDs over the summer, and I've got several left to watch for the first time.

This particular movie, with all the noise about it afterwards - how the child actors in it were paid a pittance and went right back to the slums so poignantly portrayed - I just wonder how experiencing the bouhaha before the movie might change my viewing.

...

...

Wow.

I must say, that is one great film.

.

The fairy tale ending, however, is a little too good to be true. It's as if the polemic around the moviemakers making a killing but the cast not rising out of their poverty is a continuation of the film, a next chapter in which you see, no, the fairy tale doesn't last. It's an epilogue that tones down the sticky sweetness of the end, coming back to reality.

.