Director's Spotlight
Danny Boyle
By Joshua Pasch
February 18, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
After the well-reviewed but little seen dark comedy Shallow Grave, Danny Boyle loudly announced his entrance into the indie film scene in a big way with his mid-'90s insight into London's drug scene with Trainspotting. After sticking with Ewan McGregor again for his next film, Boyle went with a post-Titanic DiCaprio for his Thailand-set paradise lost drama, The Beach – an admitted guilty pleasure for me, though generally ill-received by most. Boyle found more commercial and unexpected success in a big way in 2002 when he re-teamed with Beach writer Alex Garland for the low-budget zombie-thriller 28 Days Later. In Boyle's take on the genre, the undead exhibit a change of pace, turning from passive, walking zombies into sprinting, convulsing terrors. Boyle can be given credit for revitalizing a previously dormant genre, having preceded Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake, Romero's return to the genre with Land of the Dead, and the clever rom-com-zomb flicks Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.
Boyle's early successes across diverse genres made him a tough director to peg. His films spanned all variations of tone, theme, and overall style. He built a devout following, but a small one. His movies proved immensely popular amongst distinct groups, but none became true blockbusters. Let's shine the director's spotlight on his last three films – all of which serve to accentuate his unique and disparate choices.
Millions
In 2005, against all odds, Boyle found himself traversing new terrain – the family film. Knowing what we do about Boyle, this was never going to be your typical, put-your-parents-to-sleep-and-please-the-kids family flick. In Millions, he explores themes of lost innocence when Damien, a benevolent seven-year-old, finds a suitcase literally filled to the brim with money. The child believes the cash is a gift from the heavens themselves and immediately starts to look for ways to give it to those more needy than he. Meanwhile, he must weigh his desires for good with those of his brother's insistence that they invest it in real estate. The movie is filled with whimsical and fantastical motifs, including Damien's many interactions with the real-life likes of Saint Joseph, Peter, and Nicholas. The charm of Millions is that it manages to freshly capture the pure innocence of youth, while also grappling with the moral decisions that make life so difficult. Think of it as the antithesis to WB's 7th Heaven – a morality tale in which nothing is black and white.
The budget for Millions is probably lower than the amount found in Damien's duffle bag; the movie features an incredibly low profile cast and limited effects work. With movies that have this low of a pedigree it's always hard to peg down where the line of success lies financially. Millions closed its domestic run with a too-low-to-be-truly-successful $6.5 million and just shy of $12 million worldwide. Even still, it's quite likely Fox Searchlight was satisfied if not excited with the platform release, which debuted in five theaters and never made its way into more than 340.
Millions remains one of Boyle's most under-seen and underappreciated films – it just made BOP's 2006 Top Ten Best Overlooked Films at #8 in the Calvin Awards. While many of Boyle's movies haven't broken out into true mainstream success, they at least accrue a passionate legion of followers. Such is not the case for Millions, but does hold true with his follow-up feature.
Sunshine
A logline is a simple, one sentence description for a movie's plot – and for Boyle's films, loglines are often easy and appealing. For Millions, it is simply: young boy finds a duffel bag filled with cash and must decide what to do with it. For Sunshine, a high-concept science fiction experiment, it is: a group of astronauts must reignite the sun in order to save all mankind. The caveat, though, with all of Boyle's works is that they are all so much more than their basic through-lines. Marking new genre territory yet again for Boyle, Sunshine is at times harrowing and suspenseful, while at other times it is both trippy and metaphysical. Think of it as a mash-up of Alien and 2001: A Space Odyssey – a movie that manages to thrill and confuse all at once.
The crew, unfortunately, breaks the primary rule in Sci-Fi Logic 101 when they decide to respond to distress singles from the Icarus I, a ship that was lost in space seven years earlier on a failed mission with the same goal. Obviously, no good can come of this. And of course, the plot thickens and the pacing tightens after meeting up with the lost ship and naturally, things don't go exactly as planned.
The movie is filled with the sort of detail that transports viewers into a vividly imagined world – this one being a vessel on which the crew has lived for several years. There is a large greenhouse, gold space suits (presumably to reflect the sun's glare), protective panels on the outside of the shuttle, and an automated computer that voices commands and status updates to the crew (such as how much oxygen is left on board for the remainder of their journey). There is a sense of claustrophobia to the film, which with little exception, is set almost entirely on the spacecraft. As a member of the audience you feel trapped aboard the Icarus II with its diminishing crew as their perilous mission unfolds.
The international crew that represents mankind's last hope boasts a few notable young names (Chris Evans and 28 Days Later alumnus Cillian Murphy among them). And while they are strong actors that bring some gravitas to their roles, and both have been in some big-time blockbusters (Fantastic Four and Batman Begins respectively) neither ended up making a lick of difference at the box office. The movie pulled in an okay $6 million plus in Britain where Boyle and Murphy are notable names, but never really ignited anywhere else. Its international haul of $28 million was complemented by a mere $3.7 million on the domestic front. Ultimately, Sunshine threw under its substantial $50 million price tag. And while Sunshine does have its fans (myself included), opinions on the movie are fairly divisive. Almost everyone agrees that visually, the film is stunning and that at the very least the director of photography deserves high praise. But many of those who lauded the steady and contemplative tension that Boyle builds through the first two thirds of the movie, also complain about a third act that conforms a bit to a Hollywood ending. It's not a perfect film, to be sure, but it is a daring foray into science fiction. After Boyle was able to cross sci-fi off his list, he was able to move on to the next logical step – an homage to Bollywood.
Slumdog Millionaire
The plot of Slumdog needs little introduction at this point. After debuting in limited release at the end of 2008, the movie ended up being one of the top grosser of 2009; it parlayed an outstanding platform run into Oscar gold and a final domestic gross of $141 million and a whopping worldwide total of $377 million. With a measly production budget of $15 million, Slumdog Millionaire mirrored the financial success of Jamal, its protagonist and Millionaire show contestant, on its way to being a big earner.
Actually the story of Slumdog Millionaire's box office success was equally unlikely as that of Jamal in the film. Warner Independent Pictures originally acquired the film, but when the indie distributor shut down, Warner Bros. proper wasn't convinced of the movie's commercial appeal and nearly took it straight to a home entertainment release. Ultimately they sold the domestic rights to Fox Searchlight, who deftly handled the distribution.
After becoming the big winner of 2009's Oscar season, taking home Best Picture and Best Director among others awards, Slumdog Millionaire started to receive some publicity for the wrong reasons. Controversy stirred regarding the use of the Hindu God Rama in a particular scene, the derogatory connotations of the word "slumdog," and, more than anything else, the compensation for its child actors who were still living in the slums of Mumbai. Boyle and his backers paid to have the children attend an English school for eight years, along with providing a monthly stipends for books, and a lump sum amount of money that the children can retrieve on their 18th birthdays. The father of one of the several young actors in the film went to the press demanding higher compensation – ethical questions were raised because the film had become such a massive worldwide hit and this particular family was still living in the slums while the father battled tuberculosis. Ultimately, the filmmakers provided the family with a new home outside of the slums and more payment.
It is also worth noting that, while vastly different in tone and contextualization, Slumdog Millionare and the similarly titled Millions do share a common thematic thread. Slumdog explores the innocence of youth and how it can be corrupted in the search for material gain. Alternatively, Millions explores how, no matter how your intentions, that corruption can still take place after that wealth is achieved.
As in his other features, Slumdog Millionaire has showy visuals made on a bare bones budget. The plot, while contrived and, on the surface, gimmicky, is woven together with such sublime energy that Boyle challenges the viewer not to be charmed by his rags-to-riches story. Told primarily through flashbacks, the movie tracks the young trio of Jamal, Salim, and Latika as they both overcome and succumb to life's various hardships. A summary of some of the plot points can hardly do the film's tone justice, and would probably make it sound like a depressing night at the movies. Somehow, though, Boyle infuses Jamal's journey with such pure, unadulterated energy and wonderment that it is hard not to love going along for the ride. Even as he must endure the loss of his mother, a betrayal from his older brother, and the capture of the love of his young life by a local crime lord, Jamal's life seems like an absolute adventure. It sounds insensitive, but against all odds, when it's over, it's easy to wonder what kind of exciting exploits you yourself might have experienced had you been raised in the lively Mumbai slums. At the very least you might want to dance in the aisles when the Bollywood-style dance number plays over the films closing credits.
127 Hours
So what could possibly be next for the inventive and eclectic director? A musical? Western? Neither of those would be surprising. Instead, Boyle's next feature will be his first that is based on a true story. The contained drama will focus on Aaron Ralston, a mountaineer who, in 2003, was hiking in Utah when a massive boulder crushed his arm, pinning him there for, presumably, 127 hours. James Franco is set to play Aaron in a movie that on paper, seems like a cross between Saw and Cast Away. It's easy to wonder how this one-man show will remain entertaining for the length of an entire feature film, but, as we've learned with Boyle, almost all of his movies are more than their basic loglines.
Boyle has a good habit of re-teaming with collaborators with whom he has found success in previous projects. He has thrice worked with the actor Ewan McGregor, twice with Cillian Murphy, and twice directed features that were written by Alex Garland. This newest feature is proving to be no exception as Simon Beaufoy, the writer for Slumdog, is co-writing 127 Hours with Boyle. Together, it's likely that they'll add some unexpected dimensions to what is, on the surface, a very simple (if mildly disturbing) story.
It is quite possible that 127 Hours will attract a larger opening weekend audience than some of Boyle's other efforts because of Slumdog's previous breakout success. Hopefully, audience members will remain open to what is certainly going to be another adventurous Boyle production. After all, Boyle's greatest talent is his ability to mold his technique and apply it in exciting and unexpected ways across multiple genres. In many respects, this strength is also what prevents him from ever gaining a mass following. After watching a library of his movies, it is impossible to tell they are all from the same filmmaker as there are no common or defining characteristic of a Boyle film. Their one unifier is that they are different in every way. As an audience member, this unifying quality is what makes Boyle one of the most interesting directors working today.