MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN – The Review

Every once in a while an author becomes famous because of forces surrounding his work, rather than the work itself. Such was the case twenty-five years ago (that long!) with Salman Rushdie when his book, “The Satanic Verses” spurred Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeni to issue a fatwa against him. Well, he’s gone on to work long after the death rights and now he has adapted an earlier novel for the big screen, MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN, which arrives in theatres now, directed by Deepa Mehta. This novel and film have also generated a lot of controversy. It’s a broad overview of the history of India told through the eyes of fictional characters (much like RAGTIME). The focus is the big events of the last century. The title refers to the children born at midnight on August 15, 1947 when India became independent of England. Primarily it’s the story of one of them, a boy named Saleem. The film opens with the courtship of his grandparents in the 1920’s (he was a doctor who could only examine her through a hole in a bedsheet). We see the many armed conflicts over the years between India and its neighbor Pakistan, the formation of Bangladesh, and the many religious persecutions mixed in with family subplots involving infidelity and infants switched at birth. There’s also many elements of something called “magic realism”. Saleem has a prominent nose that enables him to hear voices, and, late at night, actually see and converse with other “midnight children”. The scenes border on the fantastic with each child purporting to have special powers and abilities (why doesn’t Charles Xavier take them to his school from the X-Men film series?). We think this is a dream or hallucination by Saleem until, in his twenties, he meets with one of the ladies who is a street performer with actual magic skills. This shifts in tone don’t quite mesh and causes the film to lose most of its momentum.

The actors are mostly culled from the, I guess this term is still used, “Bollywood” cinema. Their technique varies from subtle film emoting to the wild-eyed theatrical “big” style of playing for the balcony. One anglo actor is involved: Charles Dance (ALIEN 3) as a leering, bigoted “Simon Legree”-like British colonial who sneers at the idea of Indian independence (almost a cameo role). The costumes are full of bright vivid colors and the cinematography is quite striking. Unfortunately the film’s structure with frequent detours into “fantasy-land”stop the story’s flow and curtails much of Mehta’s confident direction. It was an ambitious effort to try and compress all this history into one film, but it never really engages the viewer. When it comes in Indian history crossed with magic realism, I’d rather revisit that young man in the lifeboat with the tiger.

2 Out of 5

MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at Landmark’s Tivoli Theatre