Published at 3:05 PM on February 24, 2009

By Rachel Dovey

Salman Rushdie critiques Slumdog Millionaire

Although Slumdog Millionaire won eight Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, Bombay-born novelist Salman Rushdie was not impressed with the film, stating during a lecture at Atlanta's Emory University that it "plies impossibility on impossibility."

This may seem a strange statement coming from a man who writes about angels, children who communicate via built-in radio signals in their heads, and planets made of stories (which, in Rushdie's fertile imagination, resemble spaghetti). But Rushdie frames his plot-lines in the slippery confines of magical realism, and Slumdog takes place in the mundane confines of this world, despite its extraordinary sequence of events. Rushdie was particulary annoyed with the scene in which Salim and Jamal end up working in front of the Taj Majal, 1000 miles from their previous destination. His critique was part of a lecture on film adaptions of books, and the novelist was critical of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Reader as well.


Of course, Rushdie has built a career on his constant stance "against the grain," and this is one of his least controversial. The glittery media certainly will not issue a fatwah for Rushdie's disdain of its current movie darling.

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