Dev Patel and Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire (image courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures)

“Bombay had become Mumbai,” Jamal Malik—a suspiciously high-scoring contestant on an Indian game show—explains to the interrogating police officer. It is the abbreviated history of his times, a young adult’s eye-witness summary of his city’s transformation from slumbering giant to world-class metropolis. Flashing back to a view atop a soaring construction site, we see another character sweep his hand across a landscape crowded with high-rises, and pointing out to Jamal (Dev Patel) that “this was once our slum,” now at the center of the world.

Jamal has been arrested on suspicion of fraud: he’s already won 10 million rupees—how could a slumdog know this much? Question by question, Jamal and the police officer review Jamal’s answers. Why did he know that one? Well, there’s a story … Jamal can account for all his knowledge with over-the-top life stories, topped by one more: he’s not even on the show for the money, which is relatively unimportant to him. He went on TV in the even longer-odds hope (“destiny,” he calls it) of finding his lost love, his fellow street child, now young woman Latika.

Scorning unimaginable wealth for love is offensive—even incomprehensible—to a city, as Salman Rushdie once described New York, boiling in money. Jamal must be a fraud. But he’s also a hero to the crowds across the country, huddled around televisions to see if he can pull off the final answer, worth 20 million rupees.

But Jamal is looking for a bigger prize. For all its flashy colors and seedy urban scenes—complete with gangsters, guns, heavy traffic, dancers, Muslim-Hindu rioting, incredible wealth and incredible poverty—Slumdog Millionaire is a love story, and a fairly simple one at that.

If Jamal’s quest for his beloved is a bit incredible, it hardly feels that way, next to the incredible world depicted here. As with The Lord of the Rings movies, the scenery is a full character here, a stunning backdrop made just a little fantastic with the director’s touch. At times a hip-hop video, at times surreal dream sequence—this is magical realism.

“You wanted to see the real India,” the young Jamal says to two distraught American tourists he has just guided into a slum—“this is it.”

Or is it? A catalogue of director Danny Boyle’s candidates for the real India, from sleek call centers to rough police stations, densely crowded streets, true poverty, false beggars, cricket matches and show business, Slumdog Millionaire may be a 21st century orientalist imagining of the real India: fantastically alive and full-sensual, exotic and a little intimidating to Western tastes.

At the same time, and for the same sensual reason, the love story’s power lies in its modesty. Hollywood’s bludgeon would have left nothing unsaid or unseen, leaving us with steamy disenchantment. We Westerners have everything, and taste everything—and we have no affection. Slumdog Jamal, on the other hand, has nothing but a deeper love than we’ve ever known.

The kind of patient, long-lasting love shown in this film is too precious to spill out all over the screen. Roman poet Ovid’s story of Apollo’s pursuit of the nymph Daphne lends itself to the aesthetic here:

He praises all he sees, and for the rest
Believes the beauties yet unseen are best.

Slumdog Millionaire does not hesitate to show us an astonishing India, but disturbs Western senses with something truly exotic: beauty left unseen. The film concludes with the gentlest embrace I ever remember seeing on screen, and a slight sense of shame at my world, which has seen everything and found no beauty.