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Comparing Salman Rushdie's Novel Midnight's Children' and Its Film Version
Comparing Salman Rushdie's Novel Midnight's Children' and Its Film Version
Paper XII (B): 4 Term Papers [M.A. Semester III, 2018- 2019]
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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,
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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work. (“Arti”)
Rachel Saltz is more critical and shows a deeper understanding of the merits and demerits
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.
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
Still, Mr. Rushdie, who wrote the screenplay (and does the curiously flat
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
march in a now-this, now-that way through history, from the early part of the 20th
the ’70s, and dart around the subcontinent, from Kashmir to Agra to Bombay to
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
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
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
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
“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
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
Philip French continues to closely examine the film version of Rushdie’s novel and it is
“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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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
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
Works Cited
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Mukherjee, Oindrila. “Midnight’s Children: The movie vs the book.’’ News18 7 Jul, 2011.
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novel.html.
Tiwari, Nishi. “Midnight’Children is magical, a must watch.’’ Rediff.com, Review 1Feb 2013.
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