Danny Boyle's "Millions"

I watched Danny Boyle's excellent movie "Millions" on this lazy Saturday. Mr Boyle's, multi-Oscar winner "Slumdog Millionaire" was not my favourite movie by many a mile. What I disliked most about it, is that it gave people a way to stereotype Indians and use the word "slumdog" for any Indian, even someone like myself who grew up in comfortable circumstances with physician parents in India.

Anyways "Millions" is about two brothers, 7-year-old Damian and his elder brother Anthony, who have lost their mother recently. Damian lands up with a bag full of pounds while playing close to a train line, shortly before a fictitious currency switch from pounds to euros in the UK. Damian's brother, Anthony, is a natural Wall-Street banker in the making and is completely obsessed by the money and ways to make it grow. He says, "If you tell the government they will take forty percent of it. FORTY PERCENT! Do you know how much that is? That's nearly ALL of it." On the opposite end of the spectrum, Damian considers the money a gift from God, and decides to emulate the many saints he day-dreams about. I love the parts where Damian roams the streets asking people "Are you poor?" before he takes them to a Pizza Hut for lunch or donates a wad of cash.

Surprisingly there is much that is similar between "Millions" and "Slumdog Millionaire". Trains, children, brothers, "Who wants to be a millionaire", gangsters, serendipitous change of circumstances, but "Millions" also has a simple message. Money is something I am still developing the right attitude about... what's the right balance between stingy and profligate? How much greed is bad? How much of your money should you donate? Greed is something that drives so much of the world around us. We live on a planet where the price of an hour of labour varies so widely based on where you do it, and where any moneyed interest will struggle to the ends of the earth for a gain regardless of the human or environmental costs. Money at times creates more trouble than it is worth.