Behind Danny Boyle was Loveleen Tandan.

Slumdog Millionaire. What a great film. I couldn't believe how incredibly complex it was - it somehow took me back to my childhood when I spent hours watching Bollywood films and yet it kept me in my present, steeped in Westernization. It was so sad because it took me down to the poverty and trials faced by the poor in India. It was so happy because it is also a story about survival, of the triumph of the humble, and of love. The children, in the story, were abused and forced to beg - mutilated so they could earn more (and this is an unfortunate fact of life, too). But they also had dreams, a sense of humour, and have the occasional chance to laugh. Some people try to simplify it down to "It's a wonderful story about love" or "it's a horrible story about poverty" - criticisms come flying at it for how the movie apparently romanticizes the horrors to make the love seem more poetic. I must disagree. The poverty was a part of life. So was the love.

Which is why it's such a wonderful movie. And I feel Loveleen Tandan, who co-directed it with Danny Boyle, was a major contributer to the film's charm. She's so selfless about the whole thing, saying, "It was meant to be a small film by Danny Boyle."

A small film! It follows the children all over India and it's a small film? It takes us from the dregs of the slums to the opulence of the rich and it's a small film? She does the insane task of translating the script from English into Hindi, does the arduous task of fitting in the cultural cues, and does casting from all over India - and it's a small film?

Ms. Tandan is being modest.

And I love her for it. She's credited as a "Co-Director (India)". But I feel that the voice that comes across in this article is truly the voice that comes across in the movie. For example, when she says, "Slums in India are not isolated. Slum dwellers have a life. It's not like they are these poverty-stricken people sitting around waiting for someone to come and help them. They have a life, a culture, a business. It's a world in itself. It's not a bunch of people waiting around. It's hustle and bustle."

That isn't the only thing she says about the slum dwellers either. She doesn't proselytize about how awful it is for them, how we should do more, no, she understands that she can't speak for them - their world isn't her world, so she doesn't get to say what's good for them and what's not, especially since they have different ideas: "At worst, I thought that the film would jolt everybody in India and abroad by showing the poverty that we know exists but that we ignore, even in our minds. Naturally, there are organisations that work in the slums, and with the communities. I wish that more was being done, but I also see the constraints on the Government. It’s a huge uphill task, and I don’t know that we can fix it overnight. Because I don’t think these communities want that. The Government in Mumbai tried to take people out of the slums and re-house them in housing communities and they’ve refused. There were huge protests. The slum dwellers said, ‘No, we’re not going anywhere. Our business is here. We don’t need to go, and live in so-called “better homes”.’ It’s tricky. You can’t be on the outside and imagine what is good for someone else in that situation. We all have different parameters."

And the thing about the article? It's never about her - it's about what she does, certainly, but of other things: the child actors, the cities, the sets, the film's place in the Indian landscape after the Mumbai attacks, the resultant controversies... she never gets defensive about anything, and she never toots her own horn.

Go read the whole thing. And go watch the movie. Srsly.