The films of Britain’s Danny Boyle cut through both the preciousness of American indies and the intellectual rigor of the European art house. Boyle’s twentysomethings are more likely to dismember a dead man’s body to conceal the theft of his ill-gotten money than to fall in love—and there will be no chess matches with Death along the way. Although he quotes Plato, Boyle’s films primarily inhabit the pop culture of his time and place.
With Danny Boyle in his Own Words (Faber & Faber), British journalist Amy Raphael conducts a lengthy series of conversations with the director covering his hardscrabble but aspiring working class childhood through his latest film, 127 Days. She is an amiable interviewer, drawing the willing Boyle along even when disagreeing with him. Boyle’s parents were Irish immigrants determined—as in the oft-heard American story—that their children would have a better life.
Although Boyle rejected the Roman Catholicism of his upbringing, he retained a stubborn work ethic, a love of the poor and downtrodden and a measure of guilt. There is often a moral center to his films wrapped in dark humor and rock’n’roll. His debut feature, Shallow Grave (1994), is an unflattering look at a trio of young professionals without values. “It’s not a directly political film,” Boyle says, yet it reflected “post-Thatcherite decay in Britain. Greed, aggrandizement, pleasure selfishness, individualism. And nothing is worth worshipping except money.”
Boyle expresses his desire to craft contemporary British cinema free of both Hollywood excess and the grim didacticism of Ken Loach while speaking knowingly of the pitfalls of his profession. The Beach (2000) was his first big budget production, enabled by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio (whom Boyle admires) but hamstrung by all that money and the director’s inability to connect with its cast of amoral neo-hippies. With the Oscar-winning Slum Dog Millionaire (2008) he was on solid ground, following a poor boy’s quest to rise above his origins. Boyle has interesting thoughts about the film’s Indian setting. “We are suffocating in relative comfort, but in India the rich are face to face with the poor. It’s the most extraordinary place.”
