Millions

Starring Alexander Nathan Etel, Lewis Owen McGibbon, James Nesbitt and Daisy Donovan

Written by Frank Cottrell Boyce

Directed by Danny Boyle

The story has entered filmmaking legend: the three-year development of Alex Garland's novel The Beach into a suitable screenplay; the casting of McGregor in the lead and his summary dismissal after Leonardo DiCaprio famously chose it as his follow-up project to Titanic; the subsequent ballooning of the budget to stratospheric heights; and the desultory mess of a film that finally made it to the theaters in 2000 and promptly sank as quickly as Leo's big boat. Few know the truth of what happened, but the debacle apparently ended the friendship between McGregor and Boyle. To we outside observers, The Beach looked a lot like Boyle's Waterloo.

Unlike Napoleon, however, Boyle spent only a short time in exile. After directing a few below-radar productions that went largely unnoticed outside of Britain, Boyle and Garland returned in triumph with the brash and visceral 2002 zombie extravaganza 28 Days Later, which rocked the box office to the tune of a $45 million US gross on an $8 million budget. After that success, Boyle could no doubt have vaulted into another high-profile Hollywood adventure and courted disaster all over again. Instead, we now we find him at the helm of the modestly budgeted, quintessentially British, sweet-natured fantasy Millions. It’s an honest artistic effort with pleasures honestly earned, and it’s proof that the karmic balance has been restored.

Millions is the story— it’s more a fable, really— of two young English boys, 7-year-old Damian (Alexander Nathan Etel) and 9-year-old Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon), who happen upon a duffle bag full of 265,000 British pounds after the bag flies off a passing train and crashes into Damian's cardboard playhouse near the tracks. Their good fortune is dampened by the impending UK currency conversion from the pound to the euro; in seven days, all 265,000 pounds will be worthless. That the money falls into their laps just as the boys are struggling to cope with the recent death of their mother only complicates matters. Should they turn in the money or spend it? How exactly do you spend a quarter of a million pounds in seven days, anyway? And what happens if the people who lost the money come looking for it?

The cash draws out an immediate contrast between the two brothers. Damian is the doe-eyed innocent, a boy to whom goodness comes so naturally that he spends his free time studying the lives of the Saints— some of whom, like St. Francis of Assisi, occasionally take corporeal form to chat with him about this or that moral dilemma. Damian's penchant for talking to dead saints exasperates Anthony, who has a more practical bent. Damian thinks the money came "from God;" Anthony sees it as mere happenstance. Damian wants to tell their father (James Nesbitt) about the money and turn it in; Anthony convinces him to keep it a secret. When they decide to spend as much of the money as possible, Damian desperately wants to give away his share to the poor— but it’s a lot harder to find honest poor folks than you might think. Anthony, meanwhile, flashes wads of bills around, buys himself an entourage to follow him around the primary school, and starts looking at real estate.

Stylistically, Boyle demonstrates that, ten years after his breakthrough, he still has fire in his belly. Millions hums along smoothly, its breakneck forward momentum supported with flashes of stop-motion and flights of cinematic fancy. The young actors, particularly young Etel as Damian, carry the load effortlessly— coaxing a winning performance out of a young actor is like coaxing a deer out of the woods, and Boyle has proven himself pretty damned good at it.

What's most immediately striking about Millions is how closely its themes mirror those of Shallow Grave. Both films explore the simple character tests that occur when morally unformed protagonists stumble upon suitcases full of cash. Both films are about temptation, and the wages of sin. The three doomed flatmates of Shallow Grave live lives of moral vacuity, their bonds of friendship and fealty built of the flimsiest stuff; the money is a psychic forge that burns away everything but their most primitive selves. It’s a terrific thrill ride, but everything the picture has to say is right on the surface: people suck, and every choice you make is predicated on naked self-interest.

In Millions, the same basic plot is refashioned as a fairy tale to illuminate deeper truths. It takes some work to see them, however. While Shallow Grave is coated in a veneer of Clinton-era hipster cynicism, Millions is so bloody whimsical and charming that you’re tempted to dismiss the whole thing as syrupy tripe. Behind the gauzy curtain of fantasy, however, lie real questions about what it means to be good in a world in which goodness has no value. Every character who encounters the money fails the test. Likewise, those whom Damian hopes to help soon prove as vain and materialistic as the rest of us. But Damian perseveres, and that makes all the difference.

These aren’t deep revelations, you understand, and the film would be a mere confection without the remarkable character of Damian. Within the context of the film, Damian lives a sinless life; you can argue that he’s a candidate for sainthood himself. What screenwriter Frank Boyce is really selling through Damian is the old-fashioned idea of faith— the faith that good deeds do matter in this world, and in the next one. What the characters are really revealing by their choices is their belief, or lack thereof, in God.

Damian’s faith never wavers, and the money has no meaning to him other than in its capacity to do good. How many of us can say that? If you want to know what God thinks about money, then take a look at the people he gives it to. And if you want to understand the importance of faith, then ask a child. Danny Boyle did, and the result is a continued return to form by a filmmaker who isn’t afraid to learn from his mistakes.

April 18, 2005
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