QUICK TAKES - Jan. 21, 2009

“Slumdog Millionaire” was meant to capture Mumbai’s “lust for life,” director Danny Boyle said Tuesday, reacting to criticism that the film glamorized poverty in India.

The cast and crew of the Oscar hopeful returned to India’s bustling financial hub on Tuesday in the run-up to the premiere there of the critically acclaimed film, a rags-to-riches story of a boy competing on a TV game show.

Some Indian newspapers and TV channels have criticized Boyle for romanticizing slums and peddling such grim realities as begging rackets, prostitution and crime as “Indian exotica.”

“The thing that I wanted people to take away from the film was . . . this breathtaking, breathtaking resilience of people and the joy of people despite their circumstances, that lust for life,” the British director said at a news conference.