Apologia Christi

The slumdog and the Millionaire

That should have been the real title for the movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Various sites around the world reported that the boy who played the brother of the main character in the movie that won 8 Oscars gained little to nothing from his movie adventure. Even worse, what happened to the movie’s Jamal Malik in his early youth when an angry mob decimates his muslim neighbourhood killing his mother, actually more or less happened to the little actor in real life. Azharuddin Ismail was rudely woken up by a police officer wielding a bamboo stick. Ten minutes later his house was bulldozed to pieces together with all the dwellings in the same shanty town.

Azharuddin and the girl that plays the young Latika, are the only two actors in the movie who actually do live in a slum. And they will probably continue to do so. Not this slum, because this one is gone. It is not that the makers of the movie completely left the two kids to themselves. There is a fund waiting for them when they grow up. Some other financial arrangements have been made as well, but apparently not enough to leave the slums behind and live in a proper apartment. « Read the rest of this entry »