Film review
Slumdog Millionaire

The film “Slumdog Millionaire”, based on Vikas Swarup’s novel, produced by Film4 and Celador Films and directed by the Englishman Danny Boyle is a dramatic comedy set in Mumbai in India, released in 2008. As he is about to win the Television show “Who wants to be a millionaire?”, the eighteen-years-old and slum kid Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) is arrested under suspicion of cheating. When the policeman asks him how he got all this knowledge on so many different subjects, Jamal reveals that every question is related to a special memory of his past. Through a series of flashbacks the spectator is then the witness of Jamal’s hard life in Mumbai’s shantytown with his older brother Salim (Madhur Mittal). We learn about his childhood, about how he lost his mother while being a child, how he met Latika (Freida Pinto), the girl he is in love with. Each question relates to a specific memory of his past, from dealing with gangs, little jobs in order to survive or a run with a ruthless gang. This enables the spectator to see and experience the rude reality of slum children.

Danny Boyle manages to show the rude reality of those children by shooting his film in Mumbai, and more impressively, in slums. The fact that he casts young actors with little or no experience in the main roles adds a piece of truth and honesty, which shows that this is real life. The power and the strength of the film also lies in the way the director Danny Boyle manages to show the evolution and the life of one of the biggest cities of India through the eyes of a child and further on through the eyes of a teenager. This is emphasized by the remarkable job of the cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle.

The way the film has been shot is a huge success. The choice of shooting the film in Mumbai’s shantytown, and the choice of using a series of flashbacks add reality and credibility to the story. The many close-ups on the characters, particularly on the protagonists’