Midnight's Children: Reviews

'Midnight's Children' review: Watch it if you have an appetite for the unusual(Rajeev Masand-CNN IBN)

Cast: Satya Bhabha, Shahana Goswami, Rajat Kapoor

Director: Deepa Mehta

The problem with authors adapting their own books into screenplays is that they're often so attached to the material, it's hard for them to yank out what doesn't necessarily work for the film and stick to the best bits. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie's look at the history of India and Pakistan as illustrated through the journey of Saleem Sinai, is an unquestionably engrossing tale, but it's impossible to squeeze it all into a two-and-a-half-hour film without it feeling like a slog.

Directed by Deepa Mehta, the film begins in Kashmir in 1917 with the charming courtship of our protagonist's grandparents, then quickly moves to the moment of Saleem Sinai's birth at the stroke of midnight on August 15 1947, when India receives its independence.

Just minutes after coming into the world, the boy is swapped in the hospital with another baby, and lands up in the hands of a wealthy couple (Shahana Goswami and Ronit Roy), while their child is taken home by a poor street-singer. As Saleem grows up, we travel with him from Bombay to Pakistan, to Bangladesh, and to New Delhi around the time of Indira Gandhi's Emergency.

Saleem, incidentally, has a unique gift - by sniffling his constantly running nose, he can summon the spirits of hundreds of children who, like him, were born at the exact hour of India's independence. Among these is Shiva (Siddharth), the Sinais' biological son, who becomes his sworn enemy, and the spell-weaving witch Parvati (Shriya Saran) who Saleem becomes romantically involved with.

Ambitious, but perhaps too much for its own good, the film struggles to incorporate the many subplots of Rushdie's Booker Prize-winning novel. As a result the film feels overlong and exhausting, many of the characters come off underdeveloped, and the magic-realism element of the story fails to blend seamlessly with its political and cultural sweep.

That's a shame because the film is beautifully shot, contains charming moments of humor, and Rushdie even manages to slip some of his rich prose into the film's voiceovers that he's delivered himself. In explaining how Saleem's life is metaphorically linked to the fate of the nation, Rushdie says our protagonist was "handcuffed to history".

It also helps that director Deepa Mehta draws some solid acting from her talented cast. Shahana Goswami skillfully conveys the emotional turmoil of a helpless mother, and Darsheel Safary is particularly touching in the part of young Saleem. But the most moving performance comes from Seema Biswas as the guilt-ridden Nurse Mary, who in a moment of misguided revolutionary fervor changes the destiny of our hero.

As the grown up Saleem, the relatively lesser known Satya Bhabha offers a sensitive turn, but it's a pity that a fine actor like Siddharth is shortchanged in the half-baked part of Shiva.

Midnight's Children has an episodic TV serial feel to it, and hits speed-bumps when you get to the clunky magic realism portions. Yet the film is never unwatchable, although your interest does begin to wane after you've hit the 100-minute mark.

I'm going with two-and-a-half out of five for Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children. Despite the hiccups, it's a film I recommend that you watch if you have an appetite for the unusual.

Rating: 2.5 / 5

Movie Review: Despite its flaws, Midnight's Children is a striking epic(Troy Ribeiro-First Post)

By Troy Ribeiro/IANS

Deepa Mehta's Midnight's Children is not 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, Salim, 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 precedes the birth of Salim 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, Salim 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 at 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 are intertwined again as adults in the film's last act when Shiva, now a ruthless military commander, and Salim, 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 Salim and Siddharth is the perfect foil for him as the embittered Shiva. Darsheel Safary as the young Salim is undoubtedly brilliant.

The competent Seema Biswas is charming as the misguided, guilt-ridden nurse and the catalyst for 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, Salim's putative grandfather is amusing. Shabana Azmi as Rajat Kapoor's wife, Sriya Sharan as Parvati, Soha Ali Khan as Salim'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.

Even with all its flaws, Midnight's Children is worth a watch. If nothing else, go and watch "Midnight's Children" to satiate your curiosity about this much-talked about novel.

Rating: **1/2

Review: Midnight's Children translates poorly to silver screen(Daniel Pinto-DNA)

Film: Midnight's Children
Cast: Satya Bhabha, Shriya Saran, Seema Biswas, Shabana Azmi, Anupam Kher, Siddharth, Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan
Director: Deepa Mehta
Rating: **

Born on the stroke of midnight when India gained Independence, the fate of Saleem Sinai (Bhabha) is handcuffed to that of the nation's. Beginning in Kashmir at the dawn of the twentieth century, the film takes a generation-spanning look at the Sinai family while showing us Sinai's unique gift bequeathed to him by fate.

The trailer of the film made Deepa Mehta's adaptation of Salman Rushdie's magnum opus out to be a superhero chase movie withthe India of yesteryear as a backdrop. It also laid bare a shocking revelation that one comes across by the end of book one which comes like a sucker punch to the gut. Bur trailers often being whatcovers are to books, I watched the film with less-than-zero expectations. As it turned out, as standalone work of art, Midnight's Children is an uneven and underwhelming experience.

The book's irreverant wit, irony and themes related to identity areskimmed through as Rushdie, the screenwriter, truncates his well-padded child. The sumptuous feast that is the source material is made insipid by holding back on the beautiful and grotesqueingredients that comprise it.

Saleem Sinai's humourous riddle-filled stream-of-consciousnessnarrative is reduced to a jaunty voiceover (by Rushdie). The role of his lover Padma, a perplexed listener, (with whom the reader could identify) is removed all together. A linear narrative is not a bad thing, but less challenging films have flouted it for more superficial reasons. The symbolism and motifs that favour the visual medium — which the novel has in spades — is scant. The evolution of Saleem's sister, for example, meets with an abrupt ending. Some of the best lines in the book surface as crudely accented utterances, awkwardly executed by the cast.

Gripping adaptations force viewers to reconcile the on-screen character portrayals with the one's visualised while poring through the book. Here, with so-so performances and sketchy writing, the characters in the script are shells of themselves with the exception of Biswas, playing Mary, the aiyah. Azmi (her role as the family matriarch, tragically reduced), Bose and Saran are decent whileBhabha, playing the cucumber-nosed protagonist, lacks presence and doesn't own the role. Siddharth is miscast as the vengeance-filled Shiva, Saleem's materialistic counterpart.

As for the visuals, the 'exoticism' that riles critics so, isn't much of a concern as the fact that the film doesn't live up to its aesthetic potential, with the exception of the bustling magicians' ghetto is Delhi.

Enough harping about the poor translates to screen. Here are sound bites from fellow reviewers who hadn't read the book:

"Was the book a satire?"

"I didn't know it was a children's book (during the interval)"

"Pretentious; everything seems staged"

Rushdie said early that the book was not infilmmable. While that may be so, film isn't the visual medium that can do justice to the work. Perhaps the BBC mini-series would have fared much better.

Midnight's Children doesn't hint at the sublimeness that is the noveland it makes for a tedious watch. It would have taken an ingenious act of condensation (look at the brilliant adaptation of Rushdie's one-time bte noire John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier (Spy) to not make the film look like an overblown history lesson but alas!

THE MAGIC IS MISSING(Business Of Cinema)