In the movie Slumdog Millionaire and the book Q&A, the life of poverty is protrayed differently. The beginning of the “play-line” in the movie portrays poverty more in my opinion. When the movie first opens, there is a scene where there is a stream that runs directly by them. The stream isn’t just a flow of “dirty-lake like water”. The “stream” is actual sewer and dump water that passes by them. In the book, the start of the story is different; this is not present.
Also, the movie places pictures that are more extreme than I would imagine while reading the book. For example, the part in the movie when the children are digging through the dump where the actual trash trucks empty is a lot more than I would have imagined while simply reading the book. The pile of garbage was enormous and they were not just walking around it “looking”. They got in the middle of the pile (touching ALL of it) and actually dug. In the book, I would have placed the children digging through “some” trash (more like the amount that homeless people do here in Austin). In my opinion, the movie in some places is able to portray poverty more.
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The movie is able to display images of poverty more clearly than the book. What it lacks is the drama of the slums that Q&A puts forth, however roughly. These distinct portrayals of poverty can be put down to the strengths of each medium, but i think it would be foolish to disregard the approaches considering how much cinematic imagery Swarup utilizes in Q&A. Whereas the movie shows explicitly what J_Eaton has mentioned, the book plays for more human drama than strictly describing the environment. However, neither is truly able to engage the audience on a deeper level with regards to the pervasive and extreme poor. We see these scenes through a lens both literally and figuratively.
ReplyDeleteBoyle and Swarup use the slums as the backdrop to their characters respective adventure rather than aiming for a deeper resonance with an audience that may not be ready for it. whereas poverty is endemic to the environment and themes of both Slumdog and Q&A, neither brings the reader face to face with it in a particularly engaging way. Poverty is. It is an aesthetic.