Seventeen years ago, Slumdog Millionaire swept the 81st Academy Awards, walking away with eight of the 10 Oscars it was nominated for.
But Danny Boyle, who took home the 2009 Academy Award for Best Director for his work on the film, says he wouldn’t be the right person to helm the Mumbai-set drama if it were in the works today.
“Yeah, we wouldn’t be able to make that now,” Boyle recently told The Guardian.
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Released in 2008, Slumdog tells the story of 18-year-old orphan Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), who survives the violent, poverty-stricken slums of Mumbai to win big on the Hindi version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The film, which loosely follows Vikas Swarup’s novel Q & A, used a local crew for its Mumbai filming locations and featured actors speaking both English and Hindi.
“At the time it felt radical,” Boyle said. “We made the decision that only a handful of us would go to Mumbai. We’d work with a big Indian crew and try to make a film within the culture.”
However, the intervening years caused Boyle to rethink that approach.
“You’re still an outsider,” the Trainspotting director said. “It’s still a flawed method. That kind of cultural appropriation might be sanctioned at certain times. But at other times it cannot be.”
As proud as the 68-year-old Brit is of the film, he acknowledged that a modern Slumdog would have trouble getting financed under that model.
“You wouldn’t even contemplate doing something like that today,” he said. “And that’s how it should be. It’s time to reflect on all that. We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we’ve left on the world.”
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Boyle told to EW in 2009 that he dove into Slumdog because he wanted to make a “very immediate and vital” movie after finishing work on the chilly sci-fi thriller Sunshine.
“I learned quickly that when you work in Mumbai you have to accept what you find,” he said at the time. “As a Westerner you have this feeling that you can fight bad things and work on good things and separate the two. What you have to do is accept and absorb both. That’s what changed me.”
In a 2008 director’s roundtable convened by The Hollywood Reporter, Boyle acknowledged that he didn’t have a full grasp on India during Slumdog’s production.
“I know nothing of it, really,” he said in THR’s video. “You get a tiny little glimpse and maybe if we’ve done it well, there’s a bit of it that’s convincing, for the time being until somebody makes something better. You absolutely have to humble yourself in front of it.”
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Boyle told the roundtable that he expected to be viewed as a colonialist when he arrived in Mumbai and was surprised that the people there viewed him as “a footnote.”
“It lets you let go of that kind of attitude,” he said. “Either you go home disappointed or you get home and make the film.”
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Today, however, Boyle told The Guardian that if he were to be part of the team bringing Slumdog to the screen today, he’d want it to be directed by a young Indian filmmaker.
“And that’s how it should be. It’s time to reflect on all that,” he said. “We have to look at the cultural baggage we carry and the mark that we’ve left on the world.”
Boyle discussed his evolving thoughts as the newest film in his zombie horror series makes its worldwide theatrical deb. Starring Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes, and Alfie Williams, 28 Years Later is a companion piece to 2002’s 28 Days Later and 2007’s 28 Weeks Later (but not, crucially, the 2000 Sandra Bullock rehab comedy/drama 28 Days).
