Scene summaries

The film Slumdog Millionaire directed by Danny Boyle begins with several pre-credits scenes. In the first scene, the main character, Jamal Malik, is sitting in an interrogation room while Constable Srinivas is blowing smoke in his face. Srinivas asks for his name and punches him. Text appears on the screen stating that Jamal Malik, from the Mumbai slums, is about to win 2o million rupees in the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. The question of how this is possible appears with answer variants, in the fashion of the gameshow. One variant is that Jamal must have cheated.

At the start of the gameshow, the host, Prem Kumar, asks more about Jamal. He answers that he works at a call center for XL5 mobile phones. With more prompting, Jamal admits that he is a call center assistant and that he serves tea there. Kumar then calls him a chaiwallah and is very amused by his job. The audience also laughs.

The scene cuts to the interrogation room, where the police inspector asks Srinivas why Jamal is not cooperating and then orders Srinivas to electrocute him. He is sure that Jamal has cheated on the game and wants to find out how. However, no amount of torture can get Jamal to admit that he cheated. He finally says that he simply knew all the answers.

Act 1

The first question

The film shows us Jamal’s childhood in the slums. Jamal was with his brother, Salim and with other children, and they were running through the slums. At one point, Jamal and Salim’s mother found them. She scolded them and took them away. At school, the teacher mockingly addressed Jamal and Salim as Porthos and Athos, in reference to the characters from The Three Musketeers. The two brothers often called each other by these nicknames.

At the game show, Kumar announces that the prize for answering the first question correctly is 1000 rupees. He tells Jamal that it is not bad money and that it must feel good to sit in a chair and answer questions for which he will get paid. Jamal seems flustered, which amuses Kumar. Then, Kumar reminds him that Jamal has three lifelines for when he does not know a question. He can ask the audience, he can phone a friend, or he can ask to have two of the wrong answer variants eliminated.

The first question is about the actor who played the main lead in a famous film from the ‘70s called Zanjeer. Jamal remembers a scene from his childhood. He was in a public toilet and Salim was outside, demanding that he come out, as someone else wanted to use the toilet as well, and he had paid Salim for it. The man got annoyed and walked away, taking the money, which made Salim angry at Jamal.

A helicopter appeared and people shouted that it was the helicopter belonging to the actor Amitabh Bachchan. Salim locked Jamal in the toilet and ran to see Bachchan. Jamal tried to open the door but could not, so he threw himself into the cesspit and got out through the sewer system. He got to the place where the helicopter landed, covered in filth, and pushed through the crowd with a picture of Amitabh Bachchan. He approached the actor who made no comment on his appearance and simply signed his picture. Later on, Salim sold the picture.

Back at the game show, Jamal chooses the correct answer. Later on, he discusses this during his interrogation in the inspector’s office. He calmly states that you do not need to be a genius to know the answer, as Bachchan is quite famous.

The next question

After Jamal answers the first question correctly, Kumar moves on to the second question, about what is written underneath India’s national emblem. Jamal hesitates. Kumar seems surprised and taunts Jamal, pointing out that this is the most famous phrase in India. Jamal says that he wants to ask the audience.

During Jamal’s interrogation, the police inspector expresses his surprise that Jamal did not know this question, even though he knew all the others. He points out that even his five-year-old daughter knows this, so how can Jamal not know. He is convinced that this is proof of his cheating and that the person who was helping him was absent during this question.

Jamal responds by asking a series of questions that the inspector cannot answer. He adds that everyone in t...