by Herbert H. Stein (from the PANY Bulletin Summer, 2009)
Slumdog Millionaire is a wonderful example of life imitating art; or, perhaps of life riding on the heels of art. The film, taken from the novel Q and A1, is a rags to riches tale of a poor orphan from the slums who wins the grand prize on the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” It has had its own rags to riches story. An independent film made with a view to DVD distribution wins worldwide awards, culminating in the Oscar for best film of 2008.
Perhaps as analysts we should not be surprised that this film about an underdog which is itself a successful underdog should have in its fabric a childhood Oedipal fantasy, the ultimate underdog drama.
The film’s underdog hero is Jamal Malik, a 20 year old orphan from the Bombay/Mumbai slums who has successfully answered the first eight questions on the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” TV show and is one question away from winning the show’s top prize, 20 million rupees.
As we enter, a skeptical police officer is trying to elicit a confession from Jamal that he has cheated. Torture having failed, he methodically takes Jamal through each question from the show to see how an uneducated “slumdog” could have the answers. But Jamal responds to the questions more like a good subject on the couch than a quiz show contestant, each one evoking associative memories from his childhood.
Through this series of flashbacks, we follow Jamal’s life from early childhood up to his police interrogation. It is a picaresque adventure in which Jamal and his older brother, Salim, survive against all odds in a hostile world. That in itself is inspiring, but we are drawn into their story in large part by the interweaving of compelling Oedipal dynamics.
This brings us to our own first question. How do these dynamics play out for two brothers who have no father?
The boys’ father not only is not present, he is never mentioned in the film. For our purposes, he never existed. We may look for substitute male figures, but on the surface, we find none. As small children, the boys live with their mother, who is their sole caretaker. They have a schoolteacher, but he mocks them, scolds them and hits them with a book in his cameo appearance. There are policemen who chase them, ignore them when they are racing from an angry mob, and torture Jamal as a young man to try to find out how he got the quiz show answers. One man who appears to be kind and nurturing proves to be the cruelest of all. In fact, the men who happen into their lives range from distant to hostile.
In these circumstances, the brothers deal very differently with maintaining a paternal image. The older brother, Salim, is feisty, returning hostility with hostility. In an early scene, when the boys are being chased through the slums of Bombay by an angry burly policeman, they turn for a moment and Salim goads the policeman with an obscene gesture, miming masturbation. Later, he attracts the attention of a powerful gang leader, Maman, by attempting to fight a man three times his size. It would appear at first that Salim has no internalized paternal image, but as the story develops, we shall find that he models himself after the most powerful and hostile of these men, emulating and working for gangsters, but always with intense ambivalence.
Jamal’s internalized paternal image is presented even more subtly. Outwardly, he does not appear to attach himself to any man, but we get a glimpse of his internal idealization.
The first question that he must answer on the quiz show is, “Who was the star in the 1973 hit film Zanjeer?” Jamal’s associations take him to an airport near their home where the boys found open air to play. He is sitting in an outhouse, his brother waiting outside. A man desperate to get in offers Salim money, but Jamal provocatively refuses to leave, frustrating the man and the brother. At this point there is much noise about the arrival of a helicopter with the movie star, Amitabh Bachchan.2 Salim gets his revenge on Jamal by locking him in the outhouse while he runs off to see the movie star.
Undaunted, the starstruck Jamal pulls out a picture of Amitabh and holding it over his head to keep it clean, he dives down into the fecal waste to make his escape. Covered in excrement, he runs through a parting crowd to present the photograph to Amitabh for his autograph. Amitabh fulfills his role by calmly signing the autograph brought him by the excrement covered boy.
From snatches of film images recalled by Jamal, we see Amitabh Bachchan fighting evil adversaries with aplomb equal to his handling of the unusual autograph. This little scene, seemingly intended to advance the story, gives us insight into Jamal’s internal world. Faced with the absence of a father in a male world which is universally hostile, Jamal has found a hero, an idealization that he can carry with him with unusual tenacity.
The contrast between the boys and the tension between them is emphasized in the subsequent scene in which Salim recoups his lost money (from the outhouse) and gets his revenge, by stealing and selling Jamal’s precious autograph while their mother is washing Jamal. In a scene reminiscent of the film Cinema Paradiso, Salim offers the autograph to the projectionist at the movie theater, who gives him two coins for it. Those who have seen Cinema Paradiso may be struck by the contrast from that film in which there was a loving relationship between the male projectionist and the fatherless boy. Here, the relationship is mercenary.
The young boys do have a mother. In the glimpses we get of her, she is kind and protective. In the first flashback, we see them literally running into her protective arms when the fat policeman is chasing them. She tells the policeman, “I’ll take care of these two,” leaving him frustrated and cursing. We next see her washing Jamal after his dive into the excrement, talking to him about his autograph.
But her role is a brief one. In her last appearance, she is washing clothes in a canal while the boys play nearby with a ball. It is a momentarily pleasant scene that gives us an image of the last memory of innocence. Suddenly a mob races through the streets attacking Moslems. Jamal’s mother screams at the boys to run. As she faces them she is struck from behind with a bat. With the boys looking on, she falls face first into the water, obviously dead. Jamal’s immediate response to the question that evokes this memory is, “I wake up every day wishing I didn’t know the answer to that question.”
Without maternal protection, male hostility becomes more intense, reaching, in fantasy, the level of castration. Accompanied now by a little girl, Latika, also abandoned in the riots, they meet Maman. He heads a gang that takes in children, seemingly for humanitarian purposes, but actually to use them as beggars and prostitutes. If Maman is a father figure, cloaked perhaps in a maternal disguise, he demonstrates the intensity of Oedipal rivalry, literally mutilating a boy, Arvind, by burning out his eyes to make him a more effective beggar.
It is during their time with Maman and his gang that Salim’s role in the film’s fantasy becomes better defined. There is a mutual attraction between Maman and Salim. Maman is intrigued by the potential in the feisty rebellious boy and adopts him as a child taskmaster over the other children. Salim, now traumatized by his mother’s violent death, is drawn to the position of power, developing a partial, although ambivalent identification with the powerful gangster.
In doing so, Salim’s role as a transitional figure becomes more prominent. He is neither child nor adult. The other children rebel against his tyranny by putting hot peppers near his genitals when he is sleeping. They laugh at his humiliation and pain, this mock attack on his genitals preparing us for the more serious attack in which Maman takes out a boy’s eyes.
Nevertheless, faced with his own advancement and his loyalty to Maman versus his loyalty to his brother, Salim saves Jamal from the mutilation, splashing ether into the face of one of the men so that they can make their escape with Latika trailing them. They get away, jumping onto a freight train, but Latika is left behind, losing her grasp of Salim’s hand as the train pulls out.
I will momentarily defer a fuller discussion of Latika’s role. She had attached to the boys when they were running and hiding from the mob after their mother’s death. Salim wants no part of her, but when Salim is pretending to try to sleep, Jamal welcomes her to join them under cover from a rain storm. Salim sees her as drawing trouble to them, but Jamal sees her as “the third musketeer.” The boys, having read Dumas’s book in their classroom, have already fancied themselves Athos and Porthos; but, in Oedipal tales, three is a destabilizing number.
Without Latika’s female presence, the boys enter a period with little tension between them. The two musketeers thrive as petty thieves on the trains, then duping and stealing from tourists at the Taj Majal. There is a lightness to most of these scenes.
But Jamal pulls Salim back to Bombay, now Mumbai, to look for Latika. When they find her, their ambivalent relationship intensifies in a raw Oedipal drama in which Salim takes over the paternal role. He is now a well developed adolescent, while Jamal is smaller and still boyish. Jamal has been obsessed with finding Latika, but Salim only becomes interested in her when he peeks through a curtain and sees that she is “sexy.”
Jamal in his innocence thinks that they will simply find Latika and take her with them, but when they are confronted by Maman and his men, they need his older brother to protect them. Salim draws a gun and ultimately shoots Maman at point blank range. It stuns both Latika and Jamal, but she recovers more quickly, the innocent Jamal having to be practically dragged from the scene.
The children escape to a seemingly abandoned hotel, where they play out the Oedipal drama. Salim is now a man who has killed. He gets drunk and leaves to enlist in the service of another gangster, Javed. Latika, still painted for dancing and enticing men, is also no longer innocent. She is touched by Jamal’s finding her, but when he avoids looking at her as she comes out of the shower, she tells him in a tone that is kind, but perhaps patronizing, “You’re a sweet boy, Jamal.” It is clear that he is still a boy, glorying in being reunited with his childhood girlfriend, but not prepared for Oedipal rivalry.
When Salim returns, he throws Jamal out of the room so that he can have Latika to himself, telling Jamal that he is the elder now. When Jamal resists, Salim points the revolver at his face, telling him that the man with the Colt .45 has the power. There is a moment when it appears that he will shoot Jamal as he has shot Maman, but Latika intervenes, telling Jamal to leave. She is more mature than Jamal, more accepting of the realities of power and sex. She is willing to be with Salim to save Jamal from a possibly deadly confrontation. The three children have played out the Oedipal drama, with a betrayed and devastated Jamal forced to leave Latika to Salim, forced out of the conjugal bedroom
As Jamal’s memories approach the present, we discover that he has lost track of his brother and Latika, but he has not lost his anger or his intense need to be reunited with Latika. He finally is able to find Salim, punching him when they meet and asking about Latika. Salim’s response is, “Still?” and tells him to forget about her, “She’s gone.” But we soon see that she is not gone. She is living with the gangster, Javed, Salim’s boss.
Using his street smarts to talk his way into Javed’s home, we have a partial reprise of the Oedipal theme as the two young people talk furtively in Javed’s kitchen while ostensibly trying to make lunch for the ornery older man. My association was to “Jack and the Beanstalk.” As in the earlier scene, Latika pushes Jamal out for his own safety.
But this sets them up for Salim’s final betrayal of his brother. Jamal has told Latika that he will wait for her every afternoon at the train station. He waits for her patiently until, to his own surprise, he sees her there below him. He calls frantically to her and finally she looks up at him, a smile on her face, a scene we have glimpsed at the beginning of the film and at other points along the way, until now without understanding. This moment of joy turns sour as Jamal sees his brother leading a gang of thugs who are racing to retrieve Latika. Jamal is left helplessly standing outside the car she has been dragged into and hears her scream his name as one of the thugs cuts her face. That betrayal prepares him and us for the next to last question in “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.”
The question is about cricket. “For 10,000,000 rupees: Which cricketer has scored the most first-class centuries in history? (A) Sachin Tendulkar, (B) Ricky Ponting, (C) Michael Slater, or (D) Jack Hobbs.”
During a commercial break, Jamal finds himself alone in the rest room with Prem, the host of the show. Throughout the film, Prem has been playfully condescending towards Jamal. Now, he tells him that they have much in common. “Guy from the slums becomes a millionaire overnight. Do you know who’s the only other person who’s done that? Me.” In a sense, they are brothers. Jamal tells him that he doesn’t know the answer to the question. Prem says, “Maybe it’s written.” When Jamal goes to the sink, he sees that Prem has marked the letter “B” on the foggy bathroom mirror.
But Jamal has been prepared for this by his interactions with his real brother. Salim has betrayed him by selling the autograph and by throwing him out of the bedroom with Latika. He has left her behind when they escaped from Maman jumping the freight train and now he has again taken her from Jamal at the train station. Jamal senses that Prem, “the only other person who’s done that,” will play the rival rather than the supportive older brother. He uses a 50/50 lifeline to eliminate two of the choices and then deliberately does not choose “B,” the answer that Prem has fed him, giving the correct answer, “D. Jack Hobbes.”
Now all the pieces fall into place. We discover why he is being interrogated by the police. Prem has fed him an answer and seeing he did not take the bait is convinced that Jamal is cheating. Or, alternatively, he is determined to eliminate a rival one way or the other. Jamal explains that he went on the show because when he was in Javed’s kitchen, he saw Latika watching the show. Having lost track of her again, he hoped that she would see him on the show and contact him. This explains why he has kept on even when in danger of losing all the money he has won. The money is not the goal.
But there is one thing that has not been explained, leading to another question that we may ask. Why is Jamal so obsessed with Latika? Salim questions it over and over. Latika tells him that she did not expect him to remember her. We know from his experience with Amitabh’s autograph that Jamal can be persistent when chasing an ideal. But why Latika?
It is here that we must look to the transforming power of trauma and the power of transference. We never learn what has happened to Jamal’s father, but we see that he is intensely loyal to the image of the man who has taken that role in fantasy. We do see how he loses his mother. It is traumatic to a degree that anyone watching the film can feel it intensely, yet it is a matter of a moment. As the film moves on, we flash back to it once, again in passing.
Another image takes its place, the image of Latika smiling at him at the train station. It is an image that combines hope and loss, a happy moment that has come to stand for another trauma, having Latika taken from him.
In fact, Latika is taken from him three times, at the railroad yard when they jump the freight train escaping from Maman, at the hotel room, when Salim forces him out at gun point and at the train station, when Salim retrieves her. We have an additional image which comes after the 8th question when we see a desperate Jamal returning to Javed’s house only to find that everyone is gone. That is what motivates him to go on the show.
We have a recurring trauma, each time the loss of a girl/woman that Jamal loves. The film reinforces our awareness with recurring images of the young Latika being left in the trainyard and the older Latika smiling at him at the station. In each case, she looks at us, at Jamal, just as his mother looked just before her death. Outside the train station, a helpless Jamal stands outside the car, watching as one of the thugs cuts Latika across the side of her face, recreating an image of the original trauma. It is this recurring trauma and the transference associated with it that drives the engine of the film.
Why do I use the term transference? Transference refers to the transfer of powerful emotions and attitudes from someone in the past to someone in the present. In analysis it develops through an ongoing relationship, but in this film, the transference is direct and immediate.
When Jamal’s mother is killed, he and his brother race from the rioters, seeing further atrocities as they go. On the way, they pass a small frightened girl, who eventually chases after them. Salim wants no part of her, perhaps his own transference reaction, but Jamal wants her to be part of their family, to be the third musketeer, to help replace the loss of his mother.
During the extended sequence in which the boys live off tourists at the Taj Majal, they sneak in one night during an outdoor opera, finding an opportunity to grab purses from under the stands. But Jamal becomes intrigued by the scene below where Orpheus sings and cries his heart out over the dead Eurydice. It is this reminder of his mother’s death that pushes him on his quest. But the images that accompany this scene are not of Jamal’s mother. We see the young Latika standing in the freight yard as Jamal and Salim move away on the train. We see her again running in the freight yard, trying to catch up to them. We see the older Latika anxiously looking around for him at the train station, and then we see her smiling up at him, the train racing past her in the background. It is no coincidence that in the next memory, the boys have returned to Mumbai because Jamal feels compelled to re-find Latika.
Jamal cannot forget Latika because he needs her to repair the traumatic loss. With each loss of her, the intensity becomes even greater to overcome the trauma, to undo the loss, to create a traumatic memory that carries a hope of reunion. It is this maternal transference that adds intensity and poignancy to the Oedipal drama in the hotel room.
The love story is driven by this fantasy of replacement, as perhaps every love story is to some extent.We intuitively understand Jamal’s need to re-find Latika. He cannot re-find his mother because she is dead, and if she were not dead, she would be his mother and not his friend and lover. But through the power of transference, Jamal can accomplish what Orpheus could not.
All of which prepares us for the final question, the one that will bring Jamal the show’s top prize, 20 million rupees. The question has to do with completing the Oedipal triangle.
“Question 9: For 20,000,000 rupees: In Alexander Dumas’ book The Three Musketeers, two of the musketeers are called Athos and Porthos. What is the name of the third Musketeer? (A) Aramis, (B) Cardinal Richelieu, (C) D’Artagnan, or (D) Planchet.”
This does not sound like a 20 million rupee question. But at this point in a film, if it has succeeded, such bits of reality are a minor annoyance. We disregard the discrepancy because we are driven at this point in the film by fantasy. The question, of course, fits our needs perfectly. Jamal has been persevering on the show because he is looking for the third musketeer. He knows the name of the third musketeer, but “Latika” is not one of the answers.
And Latika is not the only transference figure. Throughout the story, there has been a powerful male figure who is not totally a murderous rival, such as Maman or Javed and not so much an idealized fantasy figure who will come to the rescue, such as Amitabh, but some of both. In the film’s denouement, that transference figure, Salim, plays his part to gratify the Oedipal fantasy.
Along with Jamal, the audience has been gradually drawn to view Salim as a transference figure. Yes, he has betrayed his brother repeatedly, keeping him from Latika and acting the role of the Oedipal rival. But he has also been his brother’s protector, saving him twice from Maman. We, too, have come to view him ambivalently as a rival and villain as well as the only character powerful enough to stand against the Mamans and Javeds of the world. When Latika, trapped in Javed’s household, pleads with Jamal that there is no hope, he says, “Salim will help us,” prompting her to retort, “You still believe in Salim?”
But there is no one else to believe in. The police detective is a step in that direction, believing Jamal’s story and allowing him to return to the show, but his role is only a foreshadowing of the entrance of a benevolent father.
We also have had a glimpse into Salim’s inner world that suggests a deeper moral core. Before leaving to do some criminal work for Javed, possibly murder, we see Salim, dressed in prayer robes, begging forgiveness from Allah for what he is about to do. He too, has a hidden inner ideal.
Jamal, of course, has never learned the name of the third musketeer. Desperate, he uses his final lifeline, the opportunity to phone a “friend.” He has called Salim once before, seeking him from the phone bank, clearly shocked and touched when he heard his brother’s voice. As if to let us know why he will still call his treacherous brother, he offers the excuse, “It’s the only phone number I know.” We could speculate that he must seek help from idealized, protective Salim, the only positive male image left him. That wish is gratified.
Salim and Latika are with Javed’s gang, somewhere outside of Mumbai, hiding from some unknown danger. Salim sees her watching Jamal on television. Saying at one point, “He’ll never give up,” he decides to help them and to make right what he has damaged. He quietly approaches Latika and offers her the keys to his car to make her escape. She objects that Javed will kill him, but he tells her, “I can take care of Javed.” Finally, he hands her his cell phone and tells her to hold onto it.
And so, when Jamal makes his call to his brother to ask the name of the third musketeer, his brother does not answer. At first, there is no answer. Latika has left the cell phone in the car while she got out to watch the show, providing us with a little suspense as we wonder whether we are watching a true tragedy in which the lovers can never be reunited. Finally she answers, to Jamal’s shock and delight.
Of course, she does not know the name of the third musketeer. Jamal must guess and as he guesses “Aramis” (also the third baseman for the Chicago Cubs, by the way), we see Salim, dressed in his ceremonial religious robes, waiting inside a locked room for Javed and his men, standing in a tub filled with his money. As his brother wins the final prize, Salim shoots Javed and is then shot down by his henchman. As he is dying, Salim says, “God is great.”
The final piece to the fantasy is not only the re-finding of the mother through Latika, but the re-finding of a benevolent father who sacrifices his own life so that Jamal and Latika can go on with theirs together. He kills Javed as he had killed Maman so that Jamal can have his woman without shedding blood. He sacrifices his own life essentially abdicating his right of seigneur, of the rival father, allowing Jamal the Oedipal victory. In this Oedipal configuration, so common in literature and film, the child wins the mother’s love because he, not the father, truly loves her.
The final scene is a reunion of the lovers at the train station, the place at which Latika had been lost and re-lost. Jamal kisses Latika’s scar, but she asks him to kiss her on the lips. They kiss, completing the Oedipal fantasy. With this kiss, they meet halfway, Jamal ascending to manhood and Latika returning to childhood innocence, leaving us with a warm feeling that appears to repair the traumatic losses of childhood.
1. The script writer made significant changes to the plot. According to the IMDb website, the book did not contain the love story, which is central to the film.
2. Amitabh Bachchan is an Indian film star, known for many dramatic roles including his role in the potboiler, Zanjeer.
Source: IMDb website