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Paper XII (B): 4 Term Papers [M.A. Semester III, 2018- 2019]

Term Paper IV (Indian Literature in English)

12 December 2018

'Comparing Salman Rushdie’s novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ and its Film Version

Dennis Lehane , contemporary American novelist and screenwriter, some of whose books

have been very successfully adapted into films once remarked, half humorously, that film and

literature, movies and books compare like apples and giraffes. But, he maintained, that they do

compare. They do interbreed. This analogy of literature and film with giraffes and apples, on a

closer examination, gives us useful insight into the purposes of the serious filmmakers who adapt

a piece of literature into a film. Dennis Lehane’s analogy serves to draw our attention to the stark

differences in the aesthetic appeals and functions or purposes of a piece of literature and its film

adaptation. The difference in medium, obviously, does play an important part in effecting this

change. (“Dean”)

It raises the obvious question. Should beloved books be adapted for the big screen? A year

ago,Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta spoke at Emory University where Rushdie is

Distinguished Writer in Residence, about the adaptation of the novel into film, just two weeks

after completing the screenplay. The writer recited an old joke about two goats breaking into the

projection room of a movie theatre. As the goats munch on the spools, one says to the other, "So,

how's the movie?" The second goat responds, "The book was better." How often have we heard

this lament? Sometimes it's true. Once in a while it isn't. There are plenty of very good movies

made from equally good works of fiction. To mention only two eminent examples of highly

successful film adaptation, Satyajit Ray's Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) and Doctor

Zhivago are cases in point.

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In this day of visual overload, can the beauty of any literary work hold its own against a

film adaptation? What about the stylized, often dense, always clever, language, the elaborate

wordplay that someone like Rushdie is famous for? How do you cinematize a voice? The

magical realist novel is characterized by a whirl of language and a baroque accumulation of

concrete and sensory detail. It is informed with deep self-conscious post-colonial irony that

weaves together multiple narrative strands, and layers the political with the personal, the natural

with the supernatural. The non-linear narratives, the accumulation of detail, the rush of language,

are all elements of magical realism that the exponents, notably from Latin America, have used to

subvert the traditional Western forms of story-telling. The style and voice are as much a part of

these books as their plots or eccentric characters. How can these elements be adapted for the

screen, and if they are not, then isn't there a danger that the vision of the novel will be forever

overshadowed by the more mundane, entertaining, and undoubtedly more accessible

representation of the film? Perhaps a saving grace comes when the novelist himself writes the

screenplay. Last spring, at Emory, Rushdie and Mehta discussed their collaboration and the

understandable decision that he would be the one to write it. Rushdie said he "could be

disrespectful of the text in a way no one else could be," while others "might have been crippled

by respect." One of the things both he and Mehta harped on was how they almost uncannily

agreed on the list of narrative events that should be included in the movie. Mehta saw it as a

good omen. Rushdie reiterated why he thought Mehta was the right person for the project after

several failed attempts in the past by other filmmakers to impress him. About Mehta, he said,

"We are trying to make the same movie." But writing the screenplay wasn't easy, even for him.

From an early draft that was two hundred pages long, way too long for a film, to strip it down to

its final length took over a year. And it wasn't painless for the novelist to hack away at his book
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and leave out no doubt beloved sections. In order to do this, Rushdie and Mehta had to do some

serious thinking. "What's the essence of the story? What story do you have to tell without which

it would not be Midnight's Children? What can you strip away?" One thing that made it easier

was not only that it was his own book "but (his) own book from a long time ago," approximately

three decades. Of course, he ended saying that having adapted the novel "three times too many"

– once for a BBC miniseries that was never made, once for a Royal Shakespeare Company play,

and now for this film – he will hopefully never have to do it again. It's important to remember

this. Deepa Mehta has made a movie, not a post-colonial or post-modern text. She emphasized

that the idea was not to make a visual representation of the book but to make a film that "stands

on its own, keeping the themes of the novel intact."

Comparison between two different mediums is, however inevitable, in the end unfair.

Literature and cinema are two completely different art forms and what is transferred from one to

another in an adaptation are, essentially, the story and the themes. Mehta probably chose the

novel because of its dramatic, sweeping, highly entertaining story. At Emory she said, gleefully,

"It's a great yarn…a journey of despair, happiness, love, rejection, and finally hope." She's right.

Forget the politics and the scholarship for a moment and think about the fun factor of Midnight's

Children. The love story where Saleem's grandfather catches his first glimpse of his wife through

a hole in a sheet, the swapping of babies at birth, Jamila's singing, the villainous politician razing

slums and forcibly sterilizing the poor, the location changes from idyllic Kashmir to

cosmopolitan Bombay to political Delhi, Saleem's "unspeakable sister-love," the supernatural

powers of midnight's children are some funny and thematically important incidents in the novel.

The book is informed by Rushdie's wicked sense of humour. The characters are idiosyncratic and

delightful. The twists and turns in the plot provide unending entertainment. Everything about the
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novel is larger than life. How could this not be a highly enjoyable film? In the hands of a more

mainstream Bollywood director, it may have run the risk of becoming over the top. Trying to

articulate her vision of the film, Mehta said she wanted to combine wide shots with tight shots,

an alternating of opening and constriction of the lens, to film the more realistic and the magical

or absurd events in the same film. She insisted that the magical elements will be "classy, not

showy," subtle, not over the top, a blend of both lyrical and classical elements. (“Mukherjee”)

While the novel is magic realism in genre, the film adaptation is a realistic, almost exact

transposition of the novel into screen. Author Salman Rushdie asserts his authority in condensing

533 pages into 148 minutes of screen time, offering us a concise rendition of an epic story

spanning four generations. The audience has much to gain not only from Rushdie adapting his

own work, but also from his voiceover narration. This is especially beneficial for those who have

not read the novel. Here, the narrator is speaking directly to the viewers, and not like the book

narrator Saleem telling his story to Padma as the reader eavesdrops. Rushdie’s narration strings

together time, places, events, emotions and nuances into coherence. Mehta has proficiently

brought the story to screen with relatively fast pacing, engaging us with a kaleidoscope of sights

and sounds as we zip past sixty years of India’s history. From Kashmir in 1917 to Bombay 1977,

it brings us through the ending of British rule, the birth of a nation, the Partition of India and

Pakistan, later the war of independence of Bangladesh, and finally, the Emergency under the

government of Indira Gandhi.

Amidst the torrents of history emerges the main character Saleem Sinai. The film begins

with his grandfather Dr. Aziz (Rajat Kapoor) in Kashmir, examining his patient and future wife

Naseem (Shabana Azmi) through a perforated sheet. Humour adds to the enjoyment of seeing the

scene visualized.
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Then comes the next generation of Saleem’s parents Amina (Shahana Goshwami) and her

husband Ahmed Sinai (Ronit Roy), moving to Bombay, giving birth to a baby boy at the stroke

of midnight, the dawn of India’s independence on August 14, 1947. But baby Saleem is a

changeling with another baby born the same time, Shiva, by the hands of Mary (Seema Biswas)

the nurse. Young Saleem is played by the charming Darsheel Safary. He has an appealing and

affable screen presence, brightening up the film instantly when his story comes into focus.

Saleem discovers that he has the special power to summon all midnight children to appear in his

mind, children born at the stroke of India’s birth.

It is interesting to see how these Midnight’s Children Conferences convene, and watch the

confrontations intensify between Saleem and his rival changeling, Shiva. If there’s any line that

sticks out from the movie, it is this: Wars are often fought between friends. These Conferences

only mirror the adult world of governments and nations, as we see conflicts and wars unfold

chronologically with Saleem being tossed in the torrents of it all. Music adds an interesting touch

to the film. British colonial culture is reflected by Wee Willie Winkie’s (Samrat Chakrabarti)

busking tunes in Methwold’s Estate as well as the hymn singing in Saleem’s boys school. We

also see the change of political climate with Saleem’s sister Jamina (Soha Ali Khan) humming

Indian melodies with her sweet young voice at home. After the family moves to Pakistan, she

later grows up to be a popular singer supported by the Pakistani leader, as Saleem warns her,

something doesn’t smell right. Throughout, music in the film enriches the storytelling, adding

more colours to the cultural canvas.

After a forced surgery to correct his snotnose, the now adult Saleem (Satya Bhabha) gains

a special power of smell, and is glad to welcome the smell of love. And love it is that leads him
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later to marry Parvati, another midnight’s child, abandoned by Shiva and carrying his son. It is

love that prompts Saleem to raise Shiva’s child as his own. He knows it full well as he himself is

not his parents’ son by birth. In turn, his reunion with his nanny Mary in a pickle factory later in

Bombay ends with the moving moment when he acknowledges her role in raising him,

addressing her as mother.

The character of Saleem carries the story affectively throughout, culminating in the final

moment of love, for a son who is not his own, for a nation that has brought him pain and

hardship. The last scene is another birthday of Saleem’s, thus India’s. Against the celebrative

fireworks in the night sky, Saleem holds his son, a second generation of magical children, and

looks out towards a brighter future, with the love that is essential to fuel the furnace of hope.

Indeed, the tone of the film is less acerbic and irreverent than the book, the two spanning a gap

of 30 years. The milder cinematic version nevertheless is no less engrossing. With the realization

of characters and emotions plainly in sight, it is effective in its conveyance of pathos and

sentiments.

An independent and sensitive blogger named Arti gives uncanny insight into the above

mentioned adaptation compulsions of Rushdie’s book and it is worth our while to quote from her

blog:

“The shortfalls of a 148 minute cinematic adaptation from a long written work could be

expected. The mega canvas of countless lives, deaths, and historical events in the book may

appear cursory in the film and sometimes quickly wrapped up by the narration instead of being

dealt with in greater depth. Nevertheless, all in all, the cinematic offering is entertaining and
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engaging, its characterization authentic, making it an enjoyable rendition of Rushdie’s literary

work. (“Arti”)

Rachel Saltz is more critical and shows a deeper understanding of the merits and demerits

of the film adaptation in his write-up.

“To do cinematic justice to Rushdie’s novel, it would take a razzle-dazzle

entertainer with Bollywood flair and a literary bent, someone equally at home

with comedy and allegory, ghosts and little snot-nosed boys, Indian history and

Indian myth.

In short, through some kind of hocus-pocus abracadabra a directorial

equivalent of the author would need to be conjured. But there’s little magic and

even less sense of the storyteller as magician in the modest, respectful adaptation

directed by Deepa Mehta, a filmmaker whose socially engaged naturalism seems a

mismatch with Mr. Rushdie’s gleeful too-muchness.

Still, Mr. Rushdie, who wrote the screenplay (and does the curiously flat

voice-over), meets Ms. Mehta halfway. In wrestling his bursting-at-the-seams,

sometimes wearying epic into movie-acceptable size, he has pared it of authorial

quirks and compressed it, lopping off subplots and characters and flights of fancy.

What’s left is the core of the story told straight, from beginning to end, with

none of the novel’s compulsive prognosticating and backward glancing. That may

suit the straightforward style of Ms. Mehta (“Fire,” “Earth,” “Water”) but it makes
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for a movie that, if never exactly dull, feels drained of the mythic juice that

powers the book, which won the Booker Prize in 1981.” (“saltz”)

Saltz continues in the same vein, throwing more light on the film version

vis-à-vis the novel.

“Their more compelling grotesqueries shorn or diminished, the characters

march in a now-this, now-that way through history, from the early part of the 20th

century to independence to the days after Indira Gandhi’s state of emergency in

the ’70s, and dart around the subcontinent, from Kashmir to Agra to Bombay to

West Pakistan to East Pakistan (soon to be Bangladesh).

The bigger story, about India, is told through a smaller one, about a family,

and especially one boy: Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of the midnight hour on

Aug. 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s birth as a free country. There are 1,001

children born at that hour, all with special powers, but many have died by the time

Saleem (Darsheel Safary as a boy; Satya Bhabha as an adult) discovers that he can

hear the other children’s voices in his head as if he were some kind of all-India

radio.

When the midnight’s children join Saleem for chatty, contentious meetings,

the camera’s focus goes soft, which seems fitting, as the children are mostly

indistinct here, practically an afterthought, and without much metaphorical power.

When “the Widow” — Mrs. Gandhi (Sarita Choudhury) — persecutes them

during her Emergency, you wonder why she bothers.

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In any case, they take a back seat to Saleem and his family’s story. There

are infants switched at birth — one rich, one poor — revelations about

parenthood, amnesia, war, riots, sudden shifts in fortune and, most satisfyingly, a

kind of mother-son reunion between Saleem and his ayah that would do a

Bombay talkie proud.

Ms. Mehta seems most at home detailing the family life of the young

Saleem in Bombay. The two women who rule that universe, his mother (Shahana

Goswami) and the ayah (Seema Biswas) — the perpetrator of that baby switching

— give the film emotional ballast that’s lost when Saleem leaves for Pakistan.

Despite the Hindi-movie outlines of the plot, even more evident in its

stripped-bare state, Mr. Rushdie and Ms. Mehta have avoided the temptation of

turning “Midnight’s Children” into an ersatz Bollywood production. That’s

probably wise. But the film needs an injection of Bollywood’s unembarrassed,

anything-goes, bigger-than-life spirit, which embraces willy-nilly — as does Mr.

Rushdie’s novel — the vulgar, the fanciful and the frankly unbelievable.”(“saltz”)

Philip French’s review touches upon some of the significant thematic concerns that the

film is able to carry on from the novel.

“Rushdie's brilliant insight was to bring together the private and public lives of those

involved by inventing a mystical bond between the children born around the midnight hour of 17

August 1947. The narrator and central character famously remarks: "I had been mysteriously

handcuffed to history, my destinies indissolubly chained to those of my country." He and his

peers are given special powers (prophecy, magic, metamorphosis) in exchange for terrible
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responsibilities, and they become the embodiment of the best hope of the two nations during a

period of bad faith, violence and the betrayal of democracy. At the centre is a variation of Mark

Twain's tale The Prince and the Pauper: a rich boy and the son of a street musician are swapped

at birth in the early seconds of 18 August by a misguided midwife, who (following the political

dictates of her communist lover) believes she is exercising benign social engineering. So the

central characters have divided identities, a situation made even more complex by the concealed

paternity (from a European source) of one of them. The lesser of these charismatic children

suffers most through the dropping of sub-plots and the trimming of character and loss of nuance

demanded by reducing the film to some 150 minutes.” (“French”)

Philip French continues to closely examine the film version of Rushdie’s novel and it is

befitting to quote from his longish review.

“In the first post-Partition episode of Midnight's Children, we're briefly shown a poster of

the 1957 film Mother India, the most popular and revered of all Bollywood movies. It features

the monstre sacré, Nargis, the country's biggest postwar star, as a suffering peasant mother, a

symbolic Mother Courage figure of independent India. This is a clear hint that the makers

consider Midnight's Children a sophisticated urban riposte to Mother India's sentimental rural

story. Deepa Mehta, born and educated in India, is an established film-maker living in Canada.

Salman Rushdie, born in Mumbai and educated in Britain, is the subcontinent's most visible

cosmopolitan exile. They are united by this film in both sorrow and anger for what their

homeland is, and drawn together in hopeful anticipation of what it still might be.”(“French”)
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Nishi Tiwari for Rediff.com gave 3/5 stars and said: "Midnight’s Children is a must watch

for people who’ve yearned to experience Salman Rushdie iconic storytelling in a more accessible

format."(“Tiwari”)

Rotten Tomatoes provides a summary of the major reviews, which are less than gushing.

The critical consensus states that "Though Midnight's Children is beautiful to look at and

poignant in spots, its script is too indulgent and Deepa Mehta's direction, though ambitious, fails

to bring the story together cohesively." It holds a 42% rating on the Tomato meter based on 53

reviews. Reviews include: "There are some beautiful moments and some decent performances,

but it's also something of a slog and ultimately fails to engage on an emotional level", "There's

humour and heart here, but it's an overlong tale as meandering as the Ganges." and "Watchable

without ever feeling essential."(“Rotten Tomatoes”)

Salman Rushdie's Novels on Film

By Audrey Golden. Apr 15, 2017. 9:00 AM.

The film version of the novel offers, as a review in The New York Times suggests, an

alternate story of the “Birth of a Nation” in ways that both reflect and remake the novel written

more than three decades prior. The review begins with praise for both Rushdie and Mehta: “To

do cinematic justice to Salman Rushdie’s novel ‘Midnight’s Children,’ it would take a razzle-

dazzle entertainer with Bollywood flair and a literary bent, someone equally at home with

comedy and allegory, ghosts and little snot-nosed boys, Indian history and Indian myth.”

There are major differences, to be sure, between the novel and film versions of Midnight’s

Children. Most notably, many of the magical realism elements disappeared as the book made its

way to the screen. In an interview with the Indian journalism outlet News Laundry, Rushdie
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discusses the ways in which he and Deepa Mehta (Rushdie wrote the screenplay for the film, by

the way) dealt with magical realism onscreen.

The interviewer notes that, in the novel, Saleem’s nose has rubies and diamonds coming

out of it—one of the many markers of the novel’s inflection with elements of magical realism.

Considering the depiction of Saleem’s ruby- and diamond-inlaid nose for the film, Rushdie

elucidates, “Sometimes things that work on the page don’t work in an image.” And, when putting

magical realism into a cinematic space, the author explained that, “we thought in the end we

wanted to keep it within the bounds of what was anatomically possible.”

How might the film reflect a new vision of the history of the Indian subcontinent?

Considering the ways in which personal and national histories “leak into each other” in the

novel, Rushdie reflected on emphasizing that practice while writing the screenplay: “It’s partly

that I was always interested in history. You know, I was a student of history . . . . That subject of

how does the great sphere of public events, how does that affect the individual ordinary lives of

people . . . . And what is the relationship between us, between the human scale and the giant

scale.” After all, Rushdie clarifies, “Saleem believes himself to be responsible for

history.(“Golden”)

Srijana Mitra Das reviewing the film in Times of India has the following to say about it:

“Straight away, Midnight's Children (MC) is a love-letter to India. The film takes a

difficult novel and mostly does well, producing celluloid that wraps around you like a

jamevar shawl. MC opens in pre-Independence Kashmir where Dr. Aziz (Kapoor) is

treating Naseem, falling in love even as her father Ghani sahab (Anupam Kher in a

superb cameo) prattles on. Kashmiriyat is celebrated in its eccentric beauty and as
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shikaras glide by a misty Char Chinar, a visual treat unfolds. All along, as Aziz's

descendants move across India, Pakistan, even dropping into Bangladesh briefly, Salman

Rushdie's voice guides you as narrator, blending with Nitin Sawhney's musical score,

dipping often into that most fitting raga - Des. It's nicely apt for MC to offer so much in

its hearing, Rushdie voicing large ironies with tender little loves, Sawhney's score

moving you with its exquisite delights. MC also features some striking performances.

Roy as Ahmed Sinai presents a passionate portrayal while Bose as General Zulfikar is

tightly controlled, whipping at a flock of geese, luxuriating in bubble baths between

executing Pakistan's first military coup. Certain performances - Anita Majumdar as

talcum-powdered beauty Emerald, Biswas as tortured nurse Mary, Siddharth as cruel

Shiva - stand out. Some shots - Saleem's face against a fluttering hand-held fan - are

wonderful while some sequences - India's Emergency when daylight itself is imprisoned -

dramatic.

There's occasional staginess and clichés too - turbans, snakes, magicians who don't give it

a break - and sometimes, the family drama floods broader political time. The fil m's length

and some performances - Saran and Bhabha - could've been tighter. But mostly, MC

moves you with its heart and words, especially when Rushdie murmurs, "Without

passport or permit, in a basket of invisibility, I returned - to my India." You feel the

love.” ( Mitra Das)

Though a bit literal for a film that traffics in magical realism, Deepa Mehta’s Midnight’s

Children is both dreamy and dramatic, a fascinating view of Indian history seen through the

prism of a personal — and occasionally twinned — story. The film tells the story of two boys

who grow to manhood, both born at the stroke of midnight at the moment in 1947 when India
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took its independence from England. One is the son of a businessman, the other the offspring of

a beggar from the same neighborhood. The two share a mystical bond with hundreds of other

children born in that first hour of India’s independence. They share another secret as well,

though neither of them is aware of: They were switched shortly after birth, by a nurse practicing

a little social Darwinism on the privileged. It is her own act of rebellion, a response to the death

of a close friend who has been killed in the political upheaval between Muslims and Hindus, rich

and poor. What better way to show that humans are humans, no matter what their origin, than

sending the child of beggar into the home of a well-to-do businessman? So the story of Saleem

Sinai (Satya Bhabha), raised as the businessman’s son, becomes a journey of self-discovery for

young Saleem. He gets to know Shiva (Siddharth), for whom he was swapped, because Shiva

lives in his neighborhood. Shiva also starts appearing in Saleem’s ghostly visitations by

Midnight’s Children, the group connected by the supernatural bond of being born at the instant

of India’s independence, whom Saleem has the power to summon.

It's little wonder, that one of his most celebrated works, the 1981 novel Midnight's

Children had largely been termed unfilmable. Yet, as you sit through Deepa Mehta's film

adaptation of the novel, it becomes increasingly clear that Rushdie, who spent his boyhood

watching some of the greatest films of the time in Bombay, was of a different persuasion. Even

though he has admitted to having to let go of some key scenes as he wrote the screenplay, he's

done a fine job of adapting his protagonist Saleem Sinai's life story for screen. The film opens in

Kashmir as Saleem's maternal grandfather Aadam Aziz, who's a doctor, wades through the Dal

Lake to attend a house-call. A much older Saleem (voiceover narration by Rushdie himself) --

presumably in his 60s -- describes his grandfather's exceptionally large nose in humorous detail.

He proceeds to recount the events that led to his mother Mumtaz/Amina's marriage to Ahmed
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Sinai and his birth in Bombay at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 as Pandit Jawaharlal

Nehru led his newly independent country into an era full of hope and grand possibilities.

The elated new parents bring their bundle of joy in their new house -- a palatial South Bombay

house, formerly owned by an Englishman named William Methwold. What ensues is a

serendipitous life for the Sinais as young Saleem (Darsheel Safary in an impressive turn)

discovers his supernatural capabilities of communicating with other midnight children from all

across the country while his parents grapple with a life-altering revelation. Saleem is sent away

to Karachi to live with his maternal aunt Emerald and her Army officer husband Zulfikar. Unlike

the book, Mehta's Midnight's Children follows a linear narrative and makes for an engaging,

tightly written first half. While Rajat Kapoor as the pensive grandfather fits the bill, Shabana

Azmi shines as Saleem's overbearing and dramatic grandmother Naseem. There are only two

jarring characters in an otherwise good lineup of characters -- Rahul Bose's Zulfikar and Sathya

Bhabha's Saleem Sinai. Bose's portrayal of an army man with a comic air of self importance does

make you snigger but it soon becomes clear that it's the actor you are laughing at for his sheer

inability to pull it off and not at the character. And while the breathtaking Shriya Saran and

ruggedly handsome Siddharth play their parts ably as the other key children -- Parvati and Shiva

respectively -- of the momentous midnight, it's Sathya Bhabha's Saleem that lets you down. For a

protagonist, he displays fewer genuine emotions than one would have liked. The film's second

half succeeds in the sense that it makes us despair a bit -- all the good things that the first half

promises don't really materialise in the second, much like the disillusioned Saleem and empty

hopes of post-Independence era India. Parvati and Shiva's back stories have been done away with

to suit the film format. What you get for the bargain is a hauntingly melodious background score

and magical shots of celebratory fireworks, moving snapshots from a war-ravaged Bangladesh
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and Saleem dancing to Aao twist karen with younger sister Jamila. Deepa Mehta's Midnight's

Children may not be a well-crafted film of Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning novel of the

same name, yet it captures the essence of the novel to the core. Told through the lives of the

children born at the stroke of midnight of Aug 15, 1947, especially, Saleem, Shiva and Parvati, it

is a multi-layered tale of destinies. It is a story of the rich, the poor and the misguided. It is

fiction and fantasy delightfully wrapped within the folds of the political scenario of the three

countries, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.What at precedes the birth of Saleem is a complex tale

that is narrated in the first 45 minutes of the film. Inspired by her rebel husband's communist

slogan, "Let the rich be poor and the poor, rich", the misguided paediatric nurse, Mary,

deliberately switches the identity tags of the two babies as a gesture of solidarity and thereby

swaps their destinies. Moving ahead, in childhood, Saleem discovers that thanks to a sneeze and

the sniffles, he can hear and see all of the other 581 surviving children around the country born

on the same historic day and time as he. Dubbing them as Midnight's Children, he has the power

to call "conferences" in his bedroom late at night, bringing their presence together from all parts

to plan the fate of the nation, including the hot-headed Shiva and pretty and mystical Parvati, the

spell-weaving witch. The three meet again as adults in the film's last act when Shiva, now a

ruthless military commander, and Saleem, following six years of amnesia, become involved with

the beautiful adult witch, Parvati against the background of Indira Gandhi's brutal emergency

measures. Rushdie's rich characters are brought to life by a strong ensemble of esteemed actors

whose performances were well extracted by director Deepa Mehta. Debutant Satya Bhabha

delivers a confident performance as the grown up Saleem and Siddharth is the perfect foil for

him as the embittered Shiva. Darsheel Safary as the young Saleem is undoubtedly brilliant. The

competent Seema Biswas is charming as the misguided, guilt-ridden nurse and the catalyst for
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the unfolding sequence of events. Shahana Goswami smoothly conveys the poignant turmoil of

the mother inadvertently caught in the cross-fire, while Ronit Roy is exacting as the frustrated

businessman. Anita Majumdar also makes an impression as the hard-hearted, ambitious Emerald,

alongside Rahul Bose as her military power-broker husband, Zulfikar. Rajat Kapoor as Dr Aziz,

Saleem's putative grandfather is amusing. Shabana Azmi as Rajat Kapoor's wife, Sriya Sharan as

Parvati, Soha Ali Khan as Saleem's sister and Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh are

wasted. Visually, the film encompasses scenes of war, liberation, celebration, corruption,

romance and mourning - all beautifully captured by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens. The visuals

are brilliantly layered with Nitin Sawhney's ethereal score, making it a perfect backdrop with the

mystical quality of the magic realism scenes; it is like watching a stunning canvas gradually

come to life. Even with Salman Rushdie's narration and screenplay, what probably did not work

for Midnight's Children are the abrupt scenes. Each scene is brilliant, but in silos, disconnected

with the next, making it difficult to capture and bring to life the essence of the book that

combines a type of unexplained practicality. Yet this is a striking, well-produced and

thoughtfully designed epic. Nikhil Taneja is rather harsh in his review of the film and in order to

be fair to the reviewers and crics of the film, it is only sensible that his views are quoted in full.

“How do you go about adapting an epic novel whose scope is as humongous as its

legacy… if you are not Peter Jackson? The evident answer is: you don’t. Fanboys (ahem… guilty

as charged) may go on a limb and even say: you *can't*, but every now and then, a Cloud

Atlas turns up and proves us wrong. Midnight’s Children, unfortunately, is no Cloud Atlas, and is

certainly no Lord of the Rings (and not because it has no Hobbits — in fact, it has Darsheel

Safary). It's not so much that there’s anything Deepa Mehta, the director, or Salman Rushdie,

who has adapted his own book into a screenplay, have done anything wrong, or even anything
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less, than what they could have done — it’s perhaps that adapting a 600-page novel that spans 60

years and intertwines genres as diverse as magic realism and historical fiction, into a two and a

half hour movie, was never going to be easy. For those who’ve been living under a rock, the

story of Midnight's Children is the story of Saleem (played by Darsheel and Satya Bhabha), who

was born at the precise stroke of midnight, and exchanged at birth with the child of an affluent

Indian Muslim family, the Sinais. Saleem shares a gift that over a thousand children born

between the hours of 12 and 1 — the Midnight’s Children — that historic night, were bestowed

with: he has super powers. In a Bryan Singer movie, this could have led to a X-Men type battle

between these children and the villainous humans who want to destroy them, but this film sticks

largely to Saleem’s story, as he battles his destiny through two wars and the emergency. To its

credit, Midnight’s Children holds your interest for most of its running time, because, well, it *is*

a phenomenal story and no matter what you do, you cannot screw it up… beyond a point. But the

problem lies with the fact that there’s just too much happening on screen, and there’s too little

coherence between it all. There are more characters than the number of years the movie covers,

and due to the limitation of its running time, the plots these characters inhabit are half-baked and

remain unresolved, not exactly unlike the protagonist of the film, Saleem Sinai. The screenplay

quickly moves from one plot point to another, but not seamlessly, and as a result, before you can

properly start connecting with a character, or even, err, lusting for the actor that portrays it (Anita

Majumdar as Emerald, woot!), another has been introduced. And before you can start wondering

where – and why – did Emerald go, another story begins and ends prematurely, so as much as

you’d want to see more of the gorgeous Shriya Saran or the powerhouse Siddharth (playing

Parvati and Shiva, two other Midnight’s Children), all you get is a *lot* of Darsheel and Satya.

While both are decent actors and do a pretty good job, they've been pitted against some of the
 Gupta19

finest and most experienced talent our country has to offer, which really isn’t fair to them, and

so, the supporting characters register far more than them. The scene stealers are Ronit Roy, who

reprises a role similar to the one he did in Udaan, and is just as outstanding again, and Siddharth,

who sets the screen ablaze in every scene. Shahana Goswami and Rahul Bose also deliver top-

notch performances and everyone else, from the legendary Kulbushan Kharbanda to Saran are a

joy to watch. Mehta does a solid job of direction, given the muddled script, and deserves credit

for ‘showing’ so much of the history of India — including a daring section on Indira Gandhi —

by showing so little. The cinematography (Giles Nuttgens) makes the film visually powerful and

while the background score (Nitin Sawhney) compliments it for the most part, it really could

have been less clichéd. Really, when will India stop being represented by flutes in Hollywood?

And after such great primary casting, the makeup on the fringe characters is annoying, since they

look like those Indian stereotypes that Americans see us as. Largely though, Midnight’s

Children is a stunning mess, but it is, ultimately, a mess. For the brave attempt and the fabulous

ensemble cast, the movie warrants a singular visit to the theaters, but unlike the novel or the

momentous date it is built on, the movie won’t be making it to the history books.”(“Taneja”)

The bigger story, about India, is told through a smaller one, about a family, and especially

one boy: Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of the midnight hour on Aug. 15, 1947, the very

moment of India’s birth as a free country. There are 1,001 children born at that hour, all with

special powers, but many have died by the time Saleem (Darsheel Safary as a boy; Satya Bhabha

as an adult) discovers that he can hear the other children’s voices in his head as if he were some

kind of all-India radio. (That’s his power, one of the best.) When the midnight’s children join

Saleem for chatty, contentious meetings, the camera’s focus goes soft, which seems fitting, as the

children are mostly indistinct here, practically an afterthought, and without much metaphorical
 Gupta20

power. When “the Widow” — Mrs. Gandhi (Sarita Choudhury) — persecutes them during her

Emergency, you wonder why she bothers. In any case, they take a back seat to Saleem and his

family’s story. There are infants switched at birth — one rich, one poor — revelations about

parenthood, amnesia, war, riots, sudden shifts in fortune and, most satisfyingly, a kind of mother-

son reunion between Saleem and his ayah that would do a Bombay talkie proud.Ms. Mehta

seems most at home detailing the family life of the young Saleem in Bombay. The two women

who rule that universe, his mother (Shahana Goswami) and the ayah (Seema Biswas) — the

perpetrator of that baby switching — give the film emotional ballast that’s lost when Saleem

leaves for Pakistan. Despite the Hindi-movie outlines of the plot, even more evident in its

stripped-bare state, Mr. Rushdie and Ms. Mehta have avoided the temptation of turning

“Midnight’s Children” into an ersatz Bollywood production. That’s probably wise. But the film

needs an injection of Bollywood’s unembarrassed, anything-goes, bigger-than-life spirit, which

embraces willy-nilly — as does Mr. Rushdie’s novel — the vulgar, the fanciful and the frankly

unbelievable.

To conclude it must be said that the film version does more than justice to the eponymous

book. No film version of a literary book can satisfy all its viewers, reviewers and critics for the

simple reason that they bring their own biases and understanding of the medium of cinema to the

theatre and evaluate a film version according to what they would like to be made of the book.

Satyajit Ray’s magnum opus ‘Pather Panchali’ was heavily criticized by some film critics and

Ray took on them brilliantly. Ray accused his critics of failing to understand the differences in

the literary and film medium. The same might be said about the critics of the film version of

‘Midnight’s Children’. (Ray: 144-146)

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Works Cited

Arti, “Midnight’s Children film Adaptation.” Ripple Effect WordPress 22 Sep2012.

www.rippleeffects.wordpress.com/2012/09/22/midnights-children-film-adaptation/amp/.

Accessed 18 Oct 2018.

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Dean, John. “Adapting History and Literature into Movies.’’ American Studies Journal, no.53

2009. Doi: 10.18422/53-07

www.asjournal.org/53-2009/adapting-history-and-literature-into-movies.

Accessed 18 Oct 2018.

French, Philip. “Midnight’s children Review.” The Observer, 22 Dec 2012.

www.googl.co.in/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/film/2012/dec/23/midnights-children-review-

deepak-mehta.

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Golden, Audrey, “Salman Rushdie’s Novels on film" in blog BooksTellYouWhy.com 15 Apr

2017.

https://blog.bookstellyouwhy.com/salman-rushdies-novels-on-film.

Accessed 25Oct 2018

Kashyap, Deepak. "Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children." (Film) Youtube, 6 Nov 2017.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxkpCn5-Ecs.

Accessed 17 Oct 2016.

Mukherjee, Oindrila. “Midnight’s Children: The movie vs the book.’’ News18 7 Jul, 2011.

www.news18.com/news/india/midnights-children-the-movie-vs-the-book-382343.html.

Accessed 19 Oct 2018.

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Rushdie, Salman." The Midnight’s Children." Vintage Books, 1981.

Ray, Satyajit."Speaking of Films". Penguin. 2005.

Rotten Tomatoes, “Midnight’s Children 2013.”

www.rottentomatoes.com/m/midnights_children/.

Accessed 16 Oct 2018.

Saltz, Rachel. “Midnight’s Children,’ Adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s novel.’’ The New York

Times, 25 Apr 2013.

www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/movies/midnight-children-adaptation-of-salman-rushdies-

novel.html.

Accessed 17 Oct, 2018.

Tiwari, Nishi. “Midnight’Children is magical, a must watch.’’ Rediff.com, Review 1Feb 2013.

www.google.co.in/amp/m.rediff.com/amp/movies/review/-midnights-s-children-is-

magical/20130201.html.

Accessed 15 Oct 2018.

Taneja, Nikhil. “Movie Review: Midnight’s Children is a stunning mess.’’ First Post.Com 4 Feb

2010.

www.firstpost.com/entertainment/movie-review-midnights-children-is-a-stunning-mess-

611692.html

Accessed 12 Oct 2018

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Wikipedia."Midnight’s Children (film)" 9 Sep. 2012

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight%27s_Children_(film).

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