The Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, which garnered the best picture award, best song and six other Oscars at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, gave millions of Westerners a startling vision of poverty in the developing world.
Public Radio International (PRI) correspondent Jeb Sharp reported on PRI’s The World program this week that because of the movie’s focus on desperate living conditions in Mumbai and the Oscar-winning documentary short "Smile Pinki," which profiles a rural Indian girl with a cleft palate, charities are tapping the films’ popularity to increase donations that benefit India’s poor.
Jim Hickman at the Institute for One World Health, Kate Redman of Save the Children (UK) and Brian Mullaney of the Smile Train each said their organizations are using the films to promote their work because for India’s poorest children, the program reported.
As much as the movie has been celebrated in the United States, Slumdog Millionaire and its cast and crew have been treated like national heroes since the award ceremony on Sunday.
A.R. Rahman, the composer whose infectious “Jai Ho!” won the Oscar for best song, was greeted back in India by a crowd of thousands, according to a report by AFP. "I dedicate the Oscars to the people of the country and young and budding music artists," he said.
However, at least one prominent Indian has criticized the film for being too fantastical. Prize-winning novelist Salman Rushdie told an Atlanta audience it "piles impossibility on impossibility," according to news reports.
At a speech Sunday at Emory University, Rushdie reportedly complained about several scenes in the film, including one in which characters end up at the Taj Mahal, 1,000 miles from the previous scene.