Volunteer Diary #2-- Danny Boyle

Friday: My first night of working as a film venue volunteer.

Arriving at the Paramount Theater at 6pm, I was scheduled to work the premiere of Dir. Danny Boyle's (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine) Slumdog Millionaire. Little did I know, I was stumbling upon one of the festival's greatest gems.



The film drew the biggest crowd of any I saw all weekend, one that was only rivaled by Oliver Stone's W as a far as I can tell.

Slumdog Millionaire is a gritty yet heartfelt tale of an orphaned slum kid, Jamal, who rises to fame as a contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
To the surprise of the producers, Jamal nervously flies through the questions, answering each correctly, until the buzzer sounds before the equivalent of the million dollar question. Accused of cheating, Jamal is taken into custody and asked to explain how a slumdog could possibly know the answers to such challenging questions.

What follows, is a beautiful narrative of Jamal's life; through tragedy and triumph, hardship and courage, each recollection demonstrates a life lesson to correspond with the gameshow questions.

The film encompasses many of Boyle's signature elements: stylistically skewed camera angles, vivid colors and all-around dramatic cinematography. All of these elements are enhanced by the film's backdrop--a mixture of natural beauty and urban waste that paint the screen, and come to mirror the relationship between the human spirit and the wicked obstacles placed in its path.

Considering that nearly half of the film is carried by actors under the age of ten, the performances are spectacular!

As the first wave of the audience exited the theater, heaps of teary-eyed viewers descended into the refuges, err, I mean restrooms to try and conceal the passion they felt for this moving plot. And even as the less emotionally-moved crowd made their way out of the venue, the positive buzz circulated like electricity.

No matter where I went, Slumdog Millionaire seemed to be the favorite film cited by many throughout the remainder of the weekend.
*A+

After Boyle's Q&A, there was a subsequent screening of his first film, Shallow Grave, which drew an incredibly large crowd for a 13-year-old movie.


Besides seeing two great films, the highlight of my night was being called "love" by Danny Boyle after a misunderstanding about a box of pencils. haha. :)