I see that Slumdog Millionaire has been nominated this year for Academy Awards in several categories. I am delighted because I just saw this movie last weekend in the course of another one of our movie marathons.

Here is the Netflix summary:
"After coming within one question of winning 20 million rupees on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" 18-year-old Mumbai "slumdog" Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is arrested on suspicion of cheating. While in custody, Jamal regales a jaded police inspector (Irfan Khan) with remarkable tales of his life on the streets, as well as the story of Latika (Freida Pinto), the woman he loved and lost. Danny Boyle's film won all four Golden Globes for which it was nominated, including Best Picture (Drama)."

The movie starts out with torture scenes in a police station where they are trying to get Jamal to tell them how he got the difficult answers to the contest questions intercut with scenes of him on the set of "Millionaire."

I started to think the torture scenes were a figurative illustration of what he was going through trying to answer the questions, but no, it was real torture because it was unbelievable that an uneducated orphan growing up on the streets of Mumbai (or somewhere) India would know which US statesman's picture is on a $100 bill, what Indian movie star was in a 1973 movie, who wrote a certain song, etc. And each time the explanation came from some life experience such as men who gathered up kids from the street and intentionally maimed them so they would make more begging from tourists.

Jamal knew who wrote that song because once a boy could sing it adequately his eyes were burned out with acid so he would be blind and singing the song in the train station. He was very proud to learn the song and perform it for the men, not realizing what they had in store for him, but his brother, who was kind of a bad guy, managed to rescue him. He knew about Benjamin Franklin because when he saw one of the blinded boys on the street and gave him the $100 bill that came from some rich Americans in Agra where Jamal was working as an illegal guide, the blind boy told him whose picture that was. It was all coincidence, and made for a very entertaining story with a happy ending.

This is a small movie up against what sounds like a Brad Pitt blockbuster (The Strange Case of Benjamin Button) so I hope Slumdog receives at least one Oscar so that people are encouraged to see it.