Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Deepa Mehta, Roadshow Entertainment.
This adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel is a journey at once all-encompassing in scope and yet personal in tone. Midnight’s Children is described as a ‘love letter to India’.
It stands apart as both an epochal work of fiction and a brilliant performance by one of the great literary voices of our time.
A style of vista of Indian and Pakistani political and family life, the title refers to those children born at the stroke of midnight when India became independent from Britain in August 1947.
Saleem Sinai (Satya Bhabha) was one such child (of 1,001) who possesses special powers to communicate telepathically. The film actually begins in 1917 and takes Saleem’s story through 1977. The protagonist shuttles from Bombay to Karachi to Bangladesh to Delhi, sampling the signal moments of the nation’s history. Along the way he encounters a rival, Shiva (Siddharth Narayan), with whom he was switched at birth, and a woman, Parvati (Shriya Saran), another of ‘midnight’s children’ who becomes the object of both their attentions.
It’s adapted for the screen by Rushdie, who also delivers the eloquent narration.
Bhabha’s starring performance is feeble, but many of the women, including Shahana Goswami and Saran, are energetic and hold attention.
Directed by Indian-Canadian Deepa Mehta (elements trilogy Fire, Earth, Water), Rushdie’s characteristic escapade humor enlivens the family scenes, but the movie gets weighed down with endless plot intricacies and fancifulness.
Many of the appealing cast are Indian stars, but one recognisable actor in the film is Charles Dance (Game of Thrones, The Jewel in the Crown), who admirably plays William Methwold, swinging to a Tywin Lannister-like arrogance that’s a ‘paragon of British racist colonialism’.
On DVD, Midnight’s Children is not only undeniable and multifaceted, but it’s also academic.
