October 11, 2010: Millions
I’m far from a scholar of director Danny Boyle’s career, but it has become more and more clear to me over the years how two seemingly separate and parallel threads in his career are really more tightly linked than is immediately apparent. I associate Millions (2004) with what I think of as his “bright” films, along with the likes of A Life Less Ordinary (1997) and the very popular Slumdog Millionaire (2008). Through the same period, Boyle has given us some very “dark” films such as Trainspotting (1996) and 28 Days Later (2002). Looking more closely, though, these films all deal with serious conflict and people who are in over their heads, and the basic summary of each individual film doesn’t even come close to fully describing it.
Millions is, on the surface, the story of two boys who happen into a big pile of stolen cash, and how they deal with it. But the film takes the time to carefully ponder the moral questions and the ambiguities of how little errors in this big world can make or destroy your life, or can simply be experiences which help you grow as a person, and a big part of that outcome depends on strength of character. At the core of the movie is Damian, the younger of two brothers who come across a duffel bag of money which falls off a train. He is obsessed with the Catholic saints, and has visions in which they give him advice, so he’s not always sure whether what he’s seeing is real. He wants to use the money to do good in the world, but the scale of the world he knows is his friends and neighbourhood, so he not so subtly splashes the cash around, trying to help anyone who expresses a need for it. His brother is more cautious but at the same time, he can’t come up with any better ideas about what to do with the money and is conflicted about keeping it for themselves. The film plays over a fictional deadline for the British pound to convert to the Euro, making all British cash worthless after a particular date, which provides a palpable urgency to dealing with the problem of the money rather than just hiding it away and/or using it over a period of years.
Eventually the grown-ups find out about the money, and by this time the boys are being pursued by the “owners” of the stolen cash, and there are a number of plot and character intersections towards the end of the film which contribute to Millions defying categorization. I avoided this film for a long time since I thought it would be more maudlin and aimed just at kids, but it’s far from that. This is an innovative and energetic film, both in the visual imagery which is punched up with CG effects to make the world dreamlike at times, as well as in the character arcs, from the complex and fully-realized children’s personalities to their widower father who needs to make critical decisions while always under the keen gazes of his kids.
Millions is still not for everyone, since it’s so unconventional, but it’s a rewarding film to view and then think about afterward.
Complex entry in a complex career.
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