Movie
review: Deepa Mehta’s ‘Midnight’s Children’ (2012)
This blog is
part of my classroom activity of Postcolonial Studies: Film Screening on 19th
September, 2017
Here is blog of given task: Click Here
Director- Deepa Mehta
Screenplay-Salman Rushdie
Writer- Salman Rushdie
Starring- Shabana Azami, Ronit Roy, Shriya
Saran, Satya Bhabha, Anupam Kher,
Seema Biswas
‘Midnight’s Children’ (1981) is book by Booker Prize Winner
Salman Rushdie, this film is based on this book. This book has postcolonial
perspective that we see in film that first there were Britishers who colonized
people but after Independence there were Indians who are in powerful position
rule India like politicians, parents, rich people. Film deals with the
historical events of India like partition, Emergency of 1975, birth of Bangladesh etc at the backdrop with story of
two boys as History and Fiction goes parallel, the genre used by Rushdie ‘Historiographic Metafiction’ can be
observed in film as well.
The plot is complicated, we have to see with
proper concentration otherwise it’s difficult to get exact idea. It is the
story of two boys Saleem and Shiva. Both are born on the stroke of 12 midnight
of 14th August 1947 along with independence of India. Saleem is
narrator and protagonist of the story, he tells story in flashback technique. We
can read it symbolically as the birth of two nations Pakistan and India. The
children born at midnight had superpower of Telepathy. Saleem and Shiva were
swapped by a Christian nurse name Marry for his personal motive. The story
moves with the journey of two boys and the journey of nations as a backdrop.
Sometime, plot is very complicate to understand because it involves the story
of three generations, Saleem , his grandfather and his son which makes film bit
dull. Some things are unnecessarily portrayed in the film. Magic
realism used by Rushdie, where mother can entered into the dreams of her
three daughters Alia, Mumtaz and Emerald and Parvati used magic spell ‘Abracadabra’.
Picture Singh said, ‘Magic is real if
you believe in it.’
We can find
many postcolonial aspects in the film like
1) The nurse Mary swapped two children
for personal motive but it can deeply read as historical truth that Marry as superiority
of Christianity and as British policy ‘Divide
and Rule’. Historical event of partition of India shown in a fictitious
way.
2) Saleem’s father gave new name ‘Amina’
to his mother after marriage which is problematic when we read it that her
identity snatch by her husband and new life is given which shows the colonial
rule of patriarchy. Here we can apply the postcolonial theory of Gayatri Spivak
‘Can Subaltern Speak?’ in context of
inferiority of women as Vanita(Shiva’s mother) also exploited by William
Methwold.
3) Identity crises of Saleem and Shiva presented
in allegorical way. Both are not aware of their biological parents. Shiva’s
birth remain mystery that he was the child on Wilkie or Methwold. At last
Saleem accepts Marry as his mother which problematic. Dialogues shows his inner
conflict regarding his identity:-
“I had many families and I had no
family”
“I orphaned survived”
4) ‘Let the Rich be Poor and poor be
rich’, this is the Nehru’s idea to give money of rich to poor. Here ‘Rich’ can
be seen as colonizers and poor as colonized. In beginning, Mary’s deed made
Saleem ‘rich boy’ and Shiva ‘poor boy’. Shiva and his father used to came
Saleem’s house to play music and get some money which the irony of poor people.
Shiva hates Saleem for his richness and said, ‘Bloody rich boy?’ which shows the hatred of poor for rich people.
There was a song sung by Mary for Saleem as a rich boy “You want
to be, you can be”. But at the end destiny has changed and Shiva gets power
and became superior and Saleem is a victim. Richness reflects power and power
make people arrogant, cruel and superior. Before independence Britishers
colonized us and after that there is internal colonization by Indian people who
are in power starts to colonized others who are inferior one or other way. Whoever come in power behave in a same manner
either outsiders or insiders. At the end, under the Emergency the slums of poor
people were destroyed to erase the poverty.
5) At some level, we can say that though Salman
Rushdie was Indian he has portrayed India through western eyes that India is
shown as the country of snake charmers and savages. Parvati as magician used
magic basket to help Saleem and his son. Which may be present the image of
Indian people who are still believe in black magic and false practices.
At the end,
only four persons survived that Picture Singh as Hindu, Mary as Christian, Saleem
as Muslim and his son as mixture of all or again as midnight’s children. Salman
Rushdie has interwoven all the things which are going around the main event. As
the literary adaptation, it can be watch once only, you can’t sit and enjoy it
without reading in advance about book that what it try to say. Artistically and
literally, it is excellent movie but for selected audience not for normal
audience who want entertainment and delight.
Thank you,
