CelluloidChild
05-12-13, 07:21 AM
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a3/Midnight%27s_Children_Poster.jpg/220px-Midnight%27s_Children_Poster.jpg
For a director set on adapting a great novel for the screen there are many challenges. For audience members who have already read and fallen in love with the book, how will the movie live up to the literary experience? For those who haven't read it, how will the movie coherently transfer the essence of not only the story but the storytelling as well?
In the case of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children - which won the 1981 Booker Prize - these challenges are compounded by Rushdie's wonderfully unique, complex magical realist writing style. This, combined with the epic breadth of the novel, makes the adaptation as demanding as that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book Love in the Time of Cholera, attempted by Mike Newell in 2007 or - particularly on the level of its sophisticated writing and language - Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Nabokov is credited with writing Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Lolita, but apparently little of Nabokov's screenplay ended up in the final cut. Perhaps this is why Humbert Humbert's narrative, composed of brilliant run-on sentences that become increasingly mad as Humbert's mind unravels, is largely absent from the film.
With Midnight's Children director Deepa Mehta went a long way towards solving this conundrum with Rushdie's heavy personal involvement in every aspect of the film, including his screenplay which took him two years to adapt from his novel. Only Rushdie himself could have pulled off the screenplay adaptation, and perhaps this is why no other of his novels have been converted to film.
Midnight's Children - both the book and the film - is an allegorical tale of the history of India, from colonial times, through independence and up to the late 1970s when the novel was written. With Indian independence, on the stroke of midnight, August 14, 1947, two babies are switched at birth. Saleem (meaning peace) represents the potential for a united India, drawing on the creative potential of all its people. Shiva, true to his namesake, represents destructive forces - in this case, particularly those of nationalism, militarism, and jingoism.
http://filmlinc.com/page/-/uploads/comment/2013/Midnights-children-large.png
Midnight's Children is largely a tragic tale, with the first major tragedy, after colonialism, being the partition of India and Pakistan. The film spares us the horrors of the sectarian fighting (for those who wish a fuller, more graphic treatment of Indian partition, see Mehta's excellent film Earth). The focus on the mixed fates of Saleem and Shiva, together with those of their families and friends, provides an ongoing, intimate reflection of the tragedies, which ruthlessly progress through religious discrimination, exile, international war between India and Pakistan, Pakistani civil war resulting in the creation of Bangladesh, nuclear arming, political and economic corruption and repression, mass poverty, and Indira Gandhi's infamous sterilization campaign.
For me the film is a wonderful invocation of the magic of the novel. Like the novel, the film is bursting with metaphor and symbol - every character, scene, sentence, object and gesture. Mehta's sensitive directing, combined with the great acting by the well-chosen cast and the excellent production design, brings the story to vivid life. An additional treat is periodic, well-chosen narration by Rushdie himself, largely composed of sentences culled directly from the novel. Another bonus is music and singing, with one delightful scene that combines both with a Hindi version of 'Let's Twist Again,' and overall a beautifully textured score.
It's an impossible task to put oneself in the place of a viewer who has not read the novel, but for those who haven't, the film might seem overwhelming, disjointed and rambling. This may be why it has generally not received good reviews. In this sense, by choosing to depart from Nabokov's narrative style and even his novel's structure, Kubrick probably made a more widely accessible film with his treatment of Lolita (although it was also poorly received initially).
The tragedies of Midnight's Children are by no means remnants of the past. Although the story is set in India and Pakistan, Mehta decided to secretly make the film in Sri Lanka for fear of religious protests. As Rushdie's narration in the film states: 'Family history too has dietary laws. One is supposed only to swallow the hallal parts, drained of blood, but that makes the stories less juicy....' Rushdie's storytelling is many things, but it's certainly not hallal, and his book Satanic Verses provoked a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, which relegated Rushdie to hiding for many years. When the Iranian government caught wind of Mehta's film, it complained to Sri Lanka, leading to the temporary halting of production.
Despite all its tragedies, Midnight's Children ends on an optimistic note: 'The truth has been less glorious than the dream. But we have survived and made our way, and our lives have been, in spite of everything, acts of love,' Rushdie narrates. True to this sentiment, the film adaptation is a profound, shared act of love by both Rushdie and Mehta.
9/10
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2012/9/17/1347869424497/Midnights-Children-008.jpg
For a director set on adapting a great novel for the screen there are many challenges. For audience members who have already read and fallen in love with the book, how will the movie live up to the literary experience? For those who haven't read it, how will the movie coherently transfer the essence of not only the story but the storytelling as well?
In the case of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children - which won the 1981 Booker Prize - these challenges are compounded by Rushdie's wonderfully unique, complex magical realist writing style. This, combined with the epic breadth of the novel, makes the adaptation as demanding as that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book Love in the Time of Cholera, attempted by Mike Newell in 2007 or - particularly on the level of its sophisticated writing and language - Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.
Nabokov is credited with writing Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Lolita, but apparently little of Nabokov's screenplay ended up in the final cut. Perhaps this is why Humbert Humbert's narrative, composed of brilliant run-on sentences that become increasingly mad as Humbert's mind unravels, is largely absent from the film.
With Midnight's Children director Deepa Mehta went a long way towards solving this conundrum with Rushdie's heavy personal involvement in every aspect of the film, including his screenplay which took him two years to adapt from his novel. Only Rushdie himself could have pulled off the screenplay adaptation, and perhaps this is why no other of his novels have been converted to film.
Midnight's Children - both the book and the film - is an allegorical tale of the history of India, from colonial times, through independence and up to the late 1970s when the novel was written. With Indian independence, on the stroke of midnight, August 14, 1947, two babies are switched at birth. Saleem (meaning peace) represents the potential for a united India, drawing on the creative potential of all its people. Shiva, true to his namesake, represents destructive forces - in this case, particularly those of nationalism, militarism, and jingoism.
http://filmlinc.com/page/-/uploads/comment/2013/Midnights-children-large.png
Midnight's Children is largely a tragic tale, with the first major tragedy, after colonialism, being the partition of India and Pakistan. The film spares us the horrors of the sectarian fighting (for those who wish a fuller, more graphic treatment of Indian partition, see Mehta's excellent film Earth). The focus on the mixed fates of Saleem and Shiva, together with those of their families and friends, provides an ongoing, intimate reflection of the tragedies, which ruthlessly progress through religious discrimination, exile, international war between India and Pakistan, Pakistani civil war resulting in the creation of Bangladesh, nuclear arming, political and economic corruption and repression, mass poverty, and Indira Gandhi's infamous sterilization campaign.
For me the film is a wonderful invocation of the magic of the novel. Like the novel, the film is bursting with metaphor and symbol - every character, scene, sentence, object and gesture. Mehta's sensitive directing, combined with the great acting by the well-chosen cast and the excellent production design, brings the story to vivid life. An additional treat is periodic, well-chosen narration by Rushdie himself, largely composed of sentences culled directly from the novel. Another bonus is music and singing, with one delightful scene that combines both with a Hindi version of 'Let's Twist Again,' and overall a beautifully textured score.
It's an impossible task to put oneself in the place of a viewer who has not read the novel, but for those who haven't, the film might seem overwhelming, disjointed and rambling. This may be why it has generally not received good reviews. In this sense, by choosing to depart from Nabokov's narrative style and even his novel's structure, Kubrick probably made a more widely accessible film with his treatment of Lolita (although it was also poorly received initially).
The tragedies of Midnight's Children are by no means remnants of the past. Although the story is set in India and Pakistan, Mehta decided to secretly make the film in Sri Lanka for fear of religious protests. As Rushdie's narration in the film states: 'Family history too has dietary laws. One is supposed only to swallow the hallal parts, drained of blood, but that makes the stories less juicy....' Rushdie's storytelling is many things, but it's certainly not hallal, and his book Satanic Verses provoked a fatwa by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989, which relegated Rushdie to hiding for many years. When the Iranian government caught wind of Mehta's film, it complained to Sri Lanka, leading to the temporary halting of production.
Despite all its tragedies, Midnight's Children ends on an optimistic note: 'The truth has been less glorious than the dream. But we have survived and made our way, and our lives have been, in spite of everything, acts of love,' Rushdie narrates. True to this sentiment, the film adaptation is a profound, shared act of love by both Rushdie and Mehta.
9/10
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Film/Pix/pictures/2012/9/17/1347869424497/Midnights-Children-008.jpg