Slumdog Millionaire: contexts and key sequences — Eduqas GCSE Film Studies C670
Eduqas GCSE Film Studies · C670
Slumdog Millionaire: contexts and key sequences
Slumdog Millionaire
What you need to know
Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2008): Jamal Malik, from the slums of Mumbai, is one question from winning India's 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?' when he is arrested for cheating, and explains to the police how events in his life gave him each answer, and how he has searched for Latika.
A British production written by Simon Beaufoy from Vikas Swarup's novel, filmed in Mumbai with an Indian co-director, which won eight Academy Awards.
India's fast economic growth beside poverty, and debates about how the film shows the slums and their children.
Key sequences to know in detail: the opening (the quiz show, the police station and the chase through the slums), and the cesspit and the autograph.
Cinematography and mise-en-scène: canted angles, small hand-held digital cameras in the slums, colour tints for each strand of time, and the glossy studio against the police station.
Editing and sound: fast, flash-cut editing and cross-cutting between strands, sound bridges, and A. R. Rahman's score.
The few short lines of dialogue that matter most in these sequences, a few words each.
Short answers of the kind the first parts of the Section A question ask for: naming and describing a setting, character or moment, and explaining a choice.
How to answer each part: the marks, and what the short identify and explain parts need as well as the extended answer, since naming a technique instead of a specific example from the film loses marks there. Practice questions to try, each headed 'Practice question' with its marks.
