analysis

Film Wonderful David Bordwell analysis of the work done to adapt Vikas Swarup’s 2005 novel Q & A into the film Slumdog Millionaire:

Beaufoy has sharpened the plot by giving Jamal a basic goal: to unite with Latika. The quiz episodes form a means to that end: the boy goes on the show because he knows she watches it. If told in chronological order, the quiz-show stretches would have come late in the film and become a fairly monotonous pendant to the romance plot. One of the many effects of the flashback arrangement is to give the subsidiary goal more prominence, creating a parallel track for the entire film to move along and arousing anomalous suspense. (We know the outcome, but how do we get there?)

Not much I can add other than another link to my own article about film adaptation written when I was an undergrad.