by Chris Marshall:
On the surface, a movie about trivia seems like it would be
perfect for me. I’ve virtually dedicated my life to the pursuit of becoming a
great trivia player[1].
Then again, Slumdog Millionaire is no
more about playing trivia than No Country for Old Men was about finding a briefcase full of money. It’s a love story,
and the game show plot is only a contrivance to facilitate the real point of
the film.
Jamal Malik finds himself on the Indian version of “Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire?” and stuns the world (well, at least India) by
advancing all the way to the final, 20 million rupee question. The buzzer
sounds, though, meaning he will have to wait until the next night to see the
question. Immediately after walking out of the studio, he is arrested on
suspicion of cheating.
Why does he seem so suspicious? He’s from the slums and has
extremely little formal education. How, then, could he possibly advance so far
when doctors, lawyers, and professors can’t advance past the 16,000 rupee
question? After some rudimentary torture at the hands of the police, he
explains how he knew each answer.
Jamal’s explanation is that he has some personal connection
to each one, and this is considered by the authorities, at least at first, to
be highly implausible. But this exposes a fundamental misunderstanding that the
police—and, I would argue, the general public—have about trivia skill. It seems
like there is an assumption that trivia knowledge is somehow based on
intelligence, like people who know the answers to difficult questions summon
the knowledge out of thin air.
The truth is a lot simpler. Being good at trivia is a question
of having a really good memory, not being really smart. I’ve known highly
intelligent people who are absolutely terrible
at trivia, and I also know some people, even high school dropouts[2],
who are extremely good at it. It’s not like you’re trying to solve a problem;
you’re trying to recall something that’s previously been stored in your brain.
In the type of trivia that Jamal is playing, that’s really all you need. Unlike
Jeopardy!, reflexes and buzzer speed
are irrelevant.
 |
| Eh. I still prefer Regis. |
I’d also argue that the question writers for the show in Slumdog Millionaire need to be fired. The
difficulty of the questions was all over the board. The final question in
particular was incredibly easy; even a middle-class trivia player would know
that. If it appeared earlier in the game, that would be one thing. But if the
producers really want to keep everybody from walking away with the grand prize,
they might want to rethink their supposed hardest question.
But anyway. I can pontificate more about trivia later. As I
mentioned, the important part of the story is the relationship between Jamal
and his childhood friend Latika, who keep getting separated over and over
again, usually as the result of some tragedy or another. Jamal’s relationship
with his brother is also critical to the plot. His elder brother Salim was very
difficult to understand. At times he was extremely antagonistic toward Jamal—and
not in a normal, older brother kind of way—but at other times, he was
responsible for saving Jamal’s life.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like this film as much as I did the
first time I watched it. I still think it’s good, but I just found it harder to
enjoy this time around. Part of the problem is that I never like Jamal, at
least as he portrayed by Dev Patel. Younger Jamal is fine, but something about
Patel’s performance makes him seem unlikeable. I could never get behind as much
as the filmmakers intended me to.
Maybe I’m just bitter that the trivia portions of the film
didn’t get as much time and attention as they deserved. I guess I’ll just have to
wait until the Ken Jennings biopic wins Best Picture.
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