Watching Slumdog Millionaire is like being run over by a carnival. It is a colourful way to go, if you don't mind being cut short in your prime. But you cannot help thinking that back then – in your prime (an hour or a minute ago) – you were enjoying plain life and reality, while there is none of either in Danny Boyle's feelgood Mumbai tale. It explodes like a street festival, from the early scenes of scampering poverty and tragedy, filmed like demented out-takes from City of God, to the 20m rupee climax on an Indian television version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, whose previous questions, pinning the hero Jamal (Dev Patel) to his spotlit dreamtime, have been spaced through this multiple-flashback movie to structure and punctuate it.
觀看《貧民窟的百萬富翁》就像在狂歡節(jié)上被碾死。這是一種華美的離去方式，如果你不介意你最美的年華戛然終結。但你仍禁不住想，當初——在你的盛年（一小時或一分鐘以前）——你過的是平凡的生活和現實，盡管這兩種情況在丹尼?博伊爾那令人興奮的孟買故事中都無蹤可循。它就像街頭藝術節(jié)一樣突然爆發(fā)，從一開始快速閃現的貧窮和悲劇場景——拍攝手法就像《上帝之城》(City of God)里瘋狂的剪余片——到印度電視版《誰想成為百萬富翁？》(Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?)中2000萬盧比的高潮。在這之前的那些問題將男主人公杰瑪（Jamal，戴夫?帕特爾(Dev Patel)飾）釘在聚光燈下的夢境中無法自拔，這些問題貫穿于整部多重閃回的電影，不停地建構和解構。