Cast: Shriya Saran, Siddharth, Satya Bhabha, Ronit Roy, Rahul Bose, Shabana Azmi, Soha Ali Khan, Seema Biswas, Rajat Kapoor, Anupam Kher, Sarita Choudhary, Shahana Goswami, Darsheel Safary.
Director: Deepa Mehta
Screenplay: Salman Rushdie
Plot Synopsis: A pair of children, born within moments of India gaining independence from Britain, grow up in the country that is nothing like their parent’s generation.
Based on controversial British author Salman Rushdie’s novel, Midnight’s Children has been in the news for a while. And now, after courting controversies for almost a year, Deepa Mehta and Rushdie’s much-talked about film has finally released in India. But does it deliver? Critics are disappointed and here’s why:
Salman Rushdie may be the stalwart of magic realism when it comes to books, but you can’t say the same about his skills on the big screen. The adaptation of his Booker Prize winning novel with the same title does not work. One of the reasons is that the movie delves into Saleem’s ancestors needlessly. The narrational flaws seep into the film so much that the entire parallel of the lives of the midnight children and the two countries born/torn at the same time is lost in the whirlwind of characters who already take too much time to establish themselves on screen. The dialogues seem more apt for a book than for a movie.
The major flaw was with the casting of the lead actor Satya Bhabha as Saleem Sinai. Timid could have been understandable, but Satya’s performance borders on effeminate and bad. Shriya Saran keeps him company in the bad acting department as Parvati the witch. Extremely tanned, Siddharth keeps your hopes high in his villainous role as Shiva though his screen time is inadequate. Ronit Roy is excellent as Ahmed Sinai: the doting and brutal father comes unbelievably easily to him. Rahul Bose is incomparable as General Zulfikar. Don’t miss the scene when he announces his bride-to-be!
This round does not go to Deepa Mehta. An interesting novel gets turned into noise with half-developed characters racing to a garbled finale. The complex story gets no justice with her. The children coming together with Saleem looks more like a creepy scene out of a sequel of The Sixth Sense when it should have been more like a precursor to X-Men.
Verdict: Midnight’s Children is a movie that gets lost in its translation on the big screen. Catch this one only if you’re big on art and a fan of Rushdie. Watch it for the visual artistry; otherwise the magic is missing in this one.
