Playing Oscar Catch-Up

CM and I started playing catch-up with the films nominated for Oscars this year. Thankfully, we've seen quite a few during 2008 and in the early weeks of this year so our list has been whittled down somewhat.

We kicked things into gear Saturday with an early evening showing of Slumdog Millionaire. And if you haven't seen it yet, get thee to a theater!!!!

Slumdog Millionaire tells the story of Jamal Malik, an orphan from the slums of Mumbai who somehow finds his way onto India's version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? with only one question standing between him and the top prize of 20 million rupees. But with the allotted time for the show at an end, Jamal must return the following day to try his luck at the final question. However, circumstances don't always go as we would hope, and as Jamal is leaving the studio, he his arrested, taken to police headquarters where he's tortured to reveal how he is cheating. Because someone from the slums could never know the answers to all those questions, getting farther in the game than doctors and lawyers ever had. As he sits in the police office, re-watching the game show from the beginning, Jamal relates the life experiences from growing up in the slums, surviving riots which killed his Mother, made his escape from a monster while leaving behind a young girl, Latika. And with each glimpse, Jamal also reveals his growing love for the young girl and his attempts to free her from her hard life.

The first 20 - 30 minutes of the film are difficult to watch, and I can understand why some people walked out of the theater (from what my Mother told me of friends who saw the film). Torture, electrocution, the violent riots -- not easy to stomach. But CM and I made it through that and were rewarded with a remarkable film about love surviving through difficult odds. I realized this with an "a-ha!" moment towards the end, when Jamal used his last life line for the final question and when he heard Latika's voice on the other end of the call, the relief on his face told the movie audience that the game show didn't matter. That it never did.

Great acting, a great story, great directing, and a remarkable view of Mumbai and India -- we both finally understood all the most deserved acclaim and awards following the film.

On Sunday we watched the second Oscar-nominated film, the documentary Man on Wire. In the early '70s, Philip Petit, a French wirewalker, saw a picture of the soon-to-be built Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, and an idea quickly took seed: to walk a wire between the two towers. The documentary follows his team as they talk about how they planned and practiced for the walk, but not in typical documentary fashion. This film tackles the subject as if it were a bank heist, following how Petit and his multi-national team surveyed the towers, snuck to the rooftops to snap a few pictures, snuck clandestinely into the towers and stowed their gear. The tension was thick in the living room as we watched, gasping as the guards showed up from no where while the teams, laden with equipment, quickly found places to hide. Who knew a documentary could be so thrilling!! And the final pictures of him walking and lying down on that thin wire, a small black speck in the sky between the towers, were simply amazing.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that both films do well at the Oscars next month.