Midnight’s Children: A gripping epic on tape
Starring: Satya Bhabha, Shriya Saran, Shabana Azmi, Anupam Kher, Soha Ali Khan
Rated: 6.5/10
Like Life of Pi, it was a book considered un-filmable. No wonder it took 32 years for some director to gather enough courage to make a movie out of the best-ever love tribute to India in English literature. With the meticulousness of Deepa Mehta at the helm, and the inauguration of Salman Rushdie as screenplay writer and playback narrator prudent enough to make certain departures from his book, Midnight’s Children is an engaging film on a gripping novel with few rivals.
Yes, the book is unrivalled and so the movie, in comparison, a wee bit of a lag. But that does not take away from the effort by Mehta and Rushdie to adapt this treatise on India on screen, retaining most of its essence. The result is cerebral, stunning and mesmerising all at the same time. Like the book, the film chronicles pre and post independent India in all its hues, through its magical children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. It is a delectable chronicling of the political turmoil of an emerging nation on a tryst with destiny, the war and the strife with Pakistan at a time when the boundaries between Karachi and Mumbai were still somewhat seamless, when the director and narrator could take the liberty of popping over into the bodies-ridden green fields of a perpetually wet Bangladesh in 1971 and then say nonchalantly, “without passport or permit, in a basket of invisibility, I returned to my India.”
Yes, abracadabra! There’s magic in this one, but there is also the reality of turmoil and convulsion, the birth pangs of a new tri-nation, its emerging economic problems, it’s desperation to grow from servility to sovereignty and its power to amble along, pregnant with life and hope.
Amid all this, there is a story too of a Muslim family with royal leanings and lots of money. The Sinais and their journey to all parts of the subcontinent at a time when a lot was unfolding in a turbulent land which had just got freedom with the scourge of Partition that was introduced by the departing Brits as a flaw that would forever mar the progress of a nation where soney ki chidiya karti thhi basera, is gripping.
Darsheel shows off his acting prowess as the young Salim Sanai with magical sniffing powers that could bring to his attic an assembly of all the children with special abilities born along with him. He towers over in histrionics as his grown-up self, played by Satya Bhaba. A gentle Salim has a perfect counterfoil in a rough-tough-mean-lean Shiva (played to perfection by Sidharth) who grows up to be a no-nonsense Armyman straddling the most difficult eras for a man in combat. Their destinies are swapped by a misguided nurse when they are born and their paths keep crossing for the rest of their tumultuous lives which Mehta fleshes out with minimalistic splendour.
The director’s portrayal of Emergency is beyond stunning when she takes to symbolism by making even sunlight a prisoner of circumstances and keeping India dark even at noon for all those years that the magic of youth is thrown into prison and tortured by an insecure Prime Minister.
The film can’t be missed, for you just have to savour your India, Rushdie’s India in the splendour of its sepia times, its snakes-charmer clichés, its unique storytelling and its completely packed schedule of events. Personally, it has sent me back to the book and that’s quite an achievement for a film that was deemed most impossible to make for three decades.
Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 3rd February, 2013
Rated: 6.5/10
Like Life of Pi, it was a book considered un-filmable. No wonder it took 32 years for some director to gather enough courage to make a movie out of the best-ever love tribute to India in English literature. With the meticulousness of Deepa Mehta at the helm, and the inauguration of Salman Rushdie as screenplay writer and playback narrator prudent enough to make certain departures from his book, Midnight’s Children is an engaging film on a gripping novel with few rivals.
Yes, the book is unrivalled and so the movie, in comparison, a wee bit of a lag. But that does not take away from the effort by Mehta and Rushdie to adapt this treatise on India on screen, retaining most of its essence. The result is cerebral, stunning and mesmerising all at the same time. Like the book, the film chronicles pre and post independent India in all its hues, through its magical children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947. It is a delectable chronicling of the political turmoil of an emerging nation on a tryst with destiny, the war and the strife with Pakistan at a time when the boundaries between Karachi and Mumbai were still somewhat seamless, when the director and narrator could take the liberty of popping over into the bodies-ridden green fields of a perpetually wet Bangladesh in 1971 and then say nonchalantly, “without passport or permit, in a basket of invisibility, I returned to my India.”
Yes, abracadabra! There’s magic in this one, but there is also the reality of turmoil and convulsion, the birth pangs of a new tri-nation, its emerging economic problems, it’s desperation to grow from servility to sovereignty and its power to amble along, pregnant with life and hope.
Amid all this, there is a story too of a Muslim family with royal leanings and lots of money. The Sinais and their journey to all parts of the subcontinent at a time when a lot was unfolding in a turbulent land which had just got freedom with the scourge of Partition that was introduced by the departing Brits as a flaw that would forever mar the progress of a nation where soney ki chidiya karti thhi basera, is gripping.
Darsheel shows off his acting prowess as the young Salim Sanai with magical sniffing powers that could bring to his attic an assembly of all the children with special abilities born along with him. He towers over in histrionics as his grown-up self, played by Satya Bhaba. A gentle Salim has a perfect counterfoil in a rough-tough-mean-lean Shiva (played to perfection by Sidharth) who grows up to be a no-nonsense Armyman straddling the most difficult eras for a man in combat. Their destinies are swapped by a misguided nurse when they are born and their paths keep crossing for the rest of their tumultuous lives which Mehta fleshes out with minimalistic splendour.
The director’s portrayal of Emergency is beyond stunning when she takes to symbolism by making even sunlight a prisoner of circumstances and keeping India dark even at noon for all those years that the magic of youth is thrown into prison and tortured by an insecure Prime Minister.
The film can’t be missed, for you just have to savour your India, Rushdie’s India in the splendour of its sepia times, its snakes-charmer clichés, its unique storytelling and its completely packed schedule of events. Personally, it has sent me back to the book and that’s quite an achievement for a film that was deemed most impossible to make for three decades.
Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 3rd February, 2013
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