Slumdog Millionaire

A film set in Mumbai. Jamal has reached the final question on a quiz show. The programme is stopped and the police take him in; he is suspected of cheating. In the interrogation room the questions are gone through one by one. Jamal explains where he knew each answer from. From there the film is a life story. Each question attaches to a memory: a slum, a religious attack, an orphanage, children forced to beg, a train, guiding tourists at the Taj Mahal, and a call centre. There is also a girl. Latika has been there from the very beginning and Jamal spends the whole film looking for her. His brother Salim is the third line. He comes out of the same place and takes an entirely different road. What the narrative is interested in is not luck but knowledge: the film says the answers are not coincidences and that each was learned at a cost. The structure is the real idea. The questions carry the chronology and the narrative runs in three times at once: the interrogation, the programme and the past. Part of it was shot in real slum districts with handheld cameras, and some of the child actors were found there. The music is by A. R. Rahman and won in two categories at the Academy Awards. The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The criticism levelled at it in India was that poverty is presented from an outsider's view. Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal and Irrfan Khan are in the cast. Danny Boyle directed, with Loveleen Tandan as co-director. Who it is for: anyone who likes fast-cut, colourful, emotional films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the narrative uses the structure of a fairy tale and its ending follows from that.