OrpheusEurydice2.0073

Slumdog Millionaire, dir. by Danny Boyle, screenplay Simon Beaufoy (Celador Films, 2008). Based on the novel, Q&A by Vikas Swarup (Scrivener 2005).

Boyle's film introduces an Orpheus theme that is not in the Swarup novel.

The novel includes the story of the Taj Mahal in the chapter "X Gkrz Opknu (or A Love Story)", pp. 238ff.; the film's chapters 12 - 14, which carry the Taj Mahal narrative, are built especially upon a theme wrapped into Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice (min. 47ff.) When Jamal pauses from petty theft, the eternal story of Orpheus and Eurydice pierces him. (Watch the clip.)

The novel is about the pursuit of ethereal love, and the protagonist's quest for eternal female acceptance works along Eastern themes; in the film, the adapted narrative is transformed utterly by the introduction of Orpheus theme.