Movie Review : Midnight's Children - directed by Deepa mehta

This blog is a part of my classroom activity of Postcolonial Studies: Film Screening: Midnight's Children

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     Director – Deepa Mehta

Screenplay - Salman Rushdie

   Writer – Salman Rushdie

        Starring – Shabana Azmi

Ronit Roy, Shriya Saran, Satya Bhabha

              Midnight's Children is a book by Salman Rushdie that deals with India before independence and after independence. The book has a point of view of post colonialism, as we can see in the film that first there were British who have colonized and after independence there were Indians with powerful positions and were rulers of India. The movie not only represents the condition of India but Pakistan and Bangladesh are also there. Salman Rushdie has selected the historical even of independence but with fictional aspects, which reflects the term Historiography Metafiction.

            The plot is very complicated because of the confusion of parenthood of Shiva and Saleem. The whole life story of Saleem has been told by him to the audience. He starts from the marriage of his grandfather and grandmother, and also includes his mother’s life. Saleem was born at the exact movement when India became an independent nation, so the life of Saleem starts with the life of independent India and we can say that both are quite similar with each other. India got the power of democracy and Saleem got the telepathic power, even all the children who were born at exact 12 o’clock midnight of 14^th August got different kind of powers. By using his power Saleem created a link with all the states of India.

   

     In the film there are so many incidents which reflect post colonial aspects. From the very first scene when Saleem is telling his story, he says,

”most of what matters in our life takes place in our absence”

 The very significant line which suggests that how the control of our life is not in our hands.

          In the film we could see two sides of woman, one who feels they are inferior and another who is independent in nature. Naseem(Saleem’s grandmother), Vanita(exploited by William Methwold), Mumtaz(Saleem’s mother) can be seen as colonised women by Man. Here we can observe that how woman has shown as an inferior by man, Gayatri Spivak’s theory of post colonialism that “Can Subaltern Speak?” can be applied in the movie.

          We can say that the whole confusion of parentage has started because of William Mathwold, who has seduced Vanita, and supported by Mary, who has swapped the children, both were christens and some or the other way they were against the independence of India. Mary has changed the fate of two children, as in the movie there is a dialogue,

“Two lives were in hand, two babies were in palm, her private revolutionary act”

And the death of Joe suggests the Fall of Christianity in India.

  

             Saleem was humiliated by his teacher in his school and the way teacher was praising British man suggests that the education is also suffering and depended upon White people.

            Saleem was from rich family and Shiva was from poor background, both have powers but we can observe that how Shiva wants to use his power to overpower other people which reflects his hatred towards rich people and feeling of having inferiority by wealthy people, while Saleem wanted to help people and nation because he have never suffered from starvation and poverty.

          The establishment of Bangladesh, Saleem was the only survivor during the war and one Bengali man suggested him to change his identity as a Bengali otherwise he will be killed, which suggests the control of power.

The Magic of Parvati suggests that how the people of India believed in illusions, during the partition many people have to leave their country forcefully and this magical escapism of Saleem was the desire of those homeless people.

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     There are very important scenes in the film which has used camera as a language

®  Ahemd Sinai closed the door and isolated himself from the world

®  Saleem was hiding himself from his father’s ambitions.

®  Poster of “Mother India” (movie) was shown in the scene when Saleem comes to know about her mother’s extramarital affair, and in the poster the pose of lady suggests that how women are bounded with the social environment.

®  Parvati was lighting the lamps by magic and Picture singh said “Magic is real if you believe in it.”

             At the end of the movie, the family has a Hindu grandfather(Picturesingh), a Christian grandmother(Mary), a Muslim Father(Saleem), and a son who can be consider as mixture of different identities and again as Midnight’s children.