A funny thing to wake up in the morning (I'm not one of those obsessive all-night Oscar watchers) and discover that, as predicted, the British have trounced all opposition – Kate has her first one, Slumdog took eight, Man on Wire was rewarded... what a wonderful tribute to our undoubted native talent, from Tessa Ross to Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy. I just heard Beaufoy on the Today programme recounting how the team had all thought, for a period of three weeks, that Slumdog would go straight to video in the USA – a rather terrifying piece of evidence about the vicissitudes of the film industry.
There's been talk of a "backlash" against Slumdog – that old discourse about the British being endlessly negative against things of their own that do just that little bit too well. Alive to that thought, but reserving the right to think what I liked, I went to see it, finally, with a rigorously open mind on Friday. I found it fantastically directed, wonderfully told and brilliantly paced, excellently performed and, so importantly, visually astonishing. But in the end, it's a ridiculous fairytale of faintly meretricious and morally dubious odour. I don't think it takes a genius to work out why this film of unlikely triumph against terrible adversity has struck a particular chord in this economic downturn. I'm filing it away with the endless fantasies I've been hearing recently from acquaintances about winning the lottery (from people who don't even enter the lottery). Simple escapism.
