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| Delhi-6 premiers at Dubai Film Festival By Praveen Menon, 19 February, 2009 | |
 The Bollywood actor Abhishek Bachchan yesterday played down criticism of Slumdog Millionaire's portrayal of India, including comments by his famous father that the film shows the country as a "third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation".Bachchan, who was in Dubai to attend the UAE premiere of his new film Delhi-6, said he could not see how Slumdog Millionaire, which was directed by Danny Boyle, a Briton, and has been nominated for 10 Academy Awards, could be treated as a Bollywood production. "I do not understand how this film is being called an Indian film. It is a Hollywood film made by a foreign director," he said in an interview. "However, I think people who feel offended by it should not watch it. I liked the film. I thought it was very well made." Boyle's film was shot in Mumbai and tells the story of an impoverished orphan from the slums who becomes a sensation on the Indian version of the American quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Writing in his blog recently, Bachchan's father, Amitabh, one of Bollywood's most famous actors, lashed out at the film, which has won four Golden Globes, the awards of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and seven Bafta awards, which are considered the British version of the Oscars. If Slumdog Millionaire projects India as "a third-world, dirty, underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations", he wrote. Other members of the film community also supported the film. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, the director of Delhi-6, also defended Slumdog Millionaire. "I watched it and it is a good film. It is amusing why the West is so fascinated by the poverty and sadness in India when things have changed now. However, we must understand that the world is waking up to stories from India and this is good news," he said. Bachchan said he hoped his new film, in which he plays a US-born Indian whose trip to his ancestral home with his ailing grandmother turns into a voyage of discovery, resonated with Indians living here: "Dubai is a special place for me and I have visited UAE several times since I was a child. I hope we get a good response here." https://filmicafe.com/news_detail.php?news_id=9703 |
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