Midnight's Children (2012)

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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.



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




"My name is Psycho but you can call me Stuart."
Shame is mine as I have not read the book nor seen the film. However, your film review has prompted me to firstly read the book and follow it quickly with a viewing of the film.

A wonderful review.
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Thanks, Dash. I was thinking of recommending that those who have not read the book do so before seeing the film. It will lead to many hours of enjoyment from Rushdie's writing, plus, I believe, make the film more enjoyable as well.



Read the book and skip the movie - it's a waste of time.
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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."



"My name is Psycho but you can call me Stuart."
Thanks, Dash. I was thinking of recommending that those who have not read the book do so before seeing the film. It will lead to many hours of enjoyment from Rushdie's writing, plus, I believe, make the film more enjoyable as well.
You are very welcome. If a film is an adaptation then it is always my preference to read the book first...Mainly to judge the appropriateness of any interpolation.

Read the book and skip the movie - it's a waste of time.
You do know that women are more often than not antithetical creatures? So, when given advice...



Ashdoc's review---

I haven't read Salman Rushdie's much acclaimed novel . And after seeing the movie , I dont feel much like wanting to read it either .

No , dont misunderstand me---the novel is probably as great as people say it is , but the movie does not make you feel like reading it if you have not read it earlier .

But there is a juicy part to it , and that lies in the uncensored depiction of the emergency foisted upon the nation by Prime minister Indira Gandhi . Its all there shown in its ugly reality---the mass sterlizations , the destruction of peoples' lives by destroying their slums.....
One wonders how come the censors allowed it to be shown without cuts in a Congress ruled India . Or maybe the emergency has now become a story of the distant past and can be shown comfortably to people without making a dent in the ruling party's vote bank....

The movie itself is long and tedious---it tells the incredibly convoluted story of the birth and the life of Saleem Shinai . Apart from the hugely complicated story of how he came into being , what is important is that he is a midnight's child---that is , a child born on the exact moment when India achieved its independence at the stroke of the midnight hour on 15 August 1947.....and in Rushdie's novel and the movie too , midnight's children are shown to have special powers . Even though they are away from each other , they can communicate with each other . And some of them are capable of magic....

Naturally , great things are expected from them . But as the movie progresses , we see that they are not capable of doing much . And their lives themselves undergo tragedies and misfortunes.....

It is in the end that you realise it---that the midnight's children represent India itself , or maybe the whole subcontinent , since part of the movie is situated in Pakistan and Bangladesh . And the failure of the expectations that they raised by being born on independence midnight and having magical powers is the failure of the expectations raised by the independence of the nations born in august 1947.....

But things are not so bad.....
The very fact that some of them , especially Saleem Shinai have survived inspite of all the misfortunes which litter their lives ( and the misfortunes which have littered the history of the subcontinent ) shows their capacity for survival....
And above all , there is hope for the future !! For their children have inherited their powers and if they learn from the mistakes of their parents , then their futures could be brighter.....meaning of course , that the author hopes that next generation of Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis learn from past mistakes of their forefathers and build a better tommorrow.....

If you are an Indian , there's something that may warm the cockles of your heart---for Saleem Shinai is not shown to be happy in Pakistan and his face glows up only when he reaches India.....
.....And your heart may grow warmer if you are a Mumbaikar ( like I am ) for ultimately Saleem wants to live in Bombay.....
Or maybe it is Rushdie's heart speaking---for he was born and raised in Bombay......

The movie begins in Kashmir---the flashpoint of the subcontinent....and it moves from one historical event to another , from the famous speech that Nehru gave on independence to the coup of the Pakistan military that made it a military dictatorship to the 1965 war to the birth of Bangladesh to the emergency.....

The photography and camerawork is good . But you are left wishing that the movie was the same.....

Verdict--- this one is strictly for the art movie lovers .