Film and Mythology - Admission/Application Essay Example

one life-threatening crisis to another till he stumbles into the Indian version of the game show ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?’ and goes on to win the prize money. His brother Salim and his childhood flame Latika, are however not simple bystanders. The romance of Jamal of Jamal and Latika and the fortunes and misfortunes of brother Salim run parallel to the central theme of the game show which knits the movie into a cohesive whole. Jamal wins the game show and his love, Salim meets a violent end caught up in the intricacies of the Mumbai underworld.

The central theme of Slumdog Millionaire actually depicts a very ancient and important myth of India – the great Indian myth of destiny. However, the presentation of the movie strikes the right balance between compressing the myth element into a story telling form more suitable for the love story genre. “Slumdog Millionaire is a classic and timeless fable told in a very modern way about that most mysterious of Indian myths: Destiny”.1 According to this myth the destiny of every person in this world is preordained, whatever she or he does or does not do, he or she will ultimately follow the path of life that destiny has charted all along.

So it is that Jamal, Latika and Salim were to become orphans in communal riots and escape from the clutches of the mafia running a racket of beggars, only for Latika to get separated from Jamal and Salim, and then even Jamal and Salim to get separated from each other. Viewed from the perspective of the myth, notwithstanding Jamal’s desperate and all-consuming search for Latika, it is destiny that finally brings them together through a course of events involving among other things, Salim and the game show.

Even winning the game show is portrayed as a grand plan of destiny with Jamal picking up answers from incidents that have been burnt into his memory by the quirks of a very harsh life. So much so that the game show authorities find it difficult to believe that a