Summary
The film Slumdog Millionaire directed by Danny Boyle begins with the main character, Jamal Malik, who is sitting in an interrogation room with Police Constable Srinivas. The Constable asks him for his name and then punches him. Text on the screen announces that eighteen-year-old Jamal Malik from the Juhu slums of Mumbai has taken part in the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? gameshow and has gotten all the questions right. One of the explanations offered on the screen is that he might have been cheating.
The film looks back at the start of the game show, when the host, Prem Kumar, introduces Jamal and asks about his life. Jamal reluctantly answers that he is from Mumbai and works as a tea seller in a call center. This seems to amuse Kumar and the audience. Then the scene cuts back to the interrogation room where Jamal is being tortured. The police inspector arrives and wants to know how Jamal cheated, as he does not believe someone with his background would have known the answers. Jamal insists that he did.
The story shifts to the past, when Jamal was a child living in the slums with his older brother Salim and their mother. At school, the teacher mockingly addressed Jamal and Salim as Athos and Porthos, two characters from the novel The Three Musketeers.
The first question that Prem Kumar asks Jamal is about a famous Bollywood star, Amitabh Bachchan. Jamal gives the correct answer. He remembers that he managed to get Amitabh Bachchan’s autograph once when he was a child, even though Salim locked Jamal in a public toilet when Bachchan arrived in the slums. Jamal threw himself into the cesspit and managed to reach Bachchan and get his picture signed. Later, however, Salim sold the autographed picture, much to Jamal’s disappointment.
Jamal is unable to answer the second question about the phrase that is written underneath India’s national emblem and chooses to use one of his lifelines and ask the audience for help. At the police station, the inspector expresses his suspicion, since this is the most famous phrase in India. He suspects the person who was helping Jamal cheat was temporarily absent.
In the show, Prem Kumar asks Jamal what the god Rama is usually holding in his right hand. Jamal remembers the day of the Bombay Riots. He was playing in a pool with Salim while their mother was washing clothes. People armed with sticks arrived. Jamal’s mother shouted to her children to run before she was killed by the rioters. Salim and Jamal ran. They briefly spotted a girl their age but ignored her. As th...
