Hello friends, today I'm going to discuss the novel "Midnight's Children" by Salman Rushdie and the movie adaptation "Midnight's Children" directed by Deepa Mehta and narrated by Salman Rushdie. This task is assigned by our professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. This blog describes the comparison between the novel and movie adaptation. Let's have a look at some of the topics which are similar and different in both forms.
👉 First point to ponder upon is narrative technique. How was the narrative technique of the movie adaptation and in the novel ? So let's see how the technique was.
It is remarkable that what many consider as Salman Rushdie’s landmark work in fiction, Midnight’s Children, was first adapted to film only in 2012, 31 years after its publication. It was also the first of his works to be filmed. This is noteworthy given the novel’s cinematic self-awareness and the writer’s overt interest in acting and cinema, which he has reiterated over the years.2 Besides publishing, Rushdie has had a long career in the creative economy in the 1960s as a television script writer in Karachi after acting in the Cambridge Footlights Revue; in the 1970s as a freelance copywriter in advertising agencies and as an actor on the London fringe; and in later years as a script writer and performer of cameo roles in films.
Cinema, as a subject matter and a distinctive artistic language, resurfaces time and again in the pages of Rushdie’s essays, short stories, novels, and other writings. As many critics have pointed out, the writer’s emotional connection to cinema has translated into cinema itself being put to work as a mediating device in his oeuvre, with his characters often making sense of themselves and the world and coming to terms with their own place in it through cinema.
∆Here is the trailer of the movie :-
Midnight's Children is the story of Saleem Sinai, and how by virtue of being born at the very same moment of his country's independence at the midnight of August 15th, 1947 he is "handcuffed to history." Saleem and 420 other children are bound by magical powers which bind them to each other, but ultimately to their country. Rushdie explores the emergence of not only modern day India, but also of Pakistan and Bangladesh.
When Midnight’s Children was published it brought Rushdie extensive literary approval, and has later come to be understood as an example of the
“theoretical preoccupations of
postcolonial studies - not only manifesting high postmodernism’s aesthetic difficulty,
experimentation, and play but also verifying the poststructuralist emphasis on writing and
textuality.”
In his work on Midnight’s Children Neil Ten Kortenaar claims that national history writing is a
“well-defined narrative form: established origins, turning points
and climaxes, and an agreed chronology of significant events.”
Rushdie’s novel is in Kortenaar’s work discussed from different angles, subjects such as hybridity and magic realism are treated. However, through Kortenaar’s chapter, The Allegory of History, national allegory in the novel is a fundamental topic. According to the Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms allegory is a story with a second distinct meaning, the principal technique of allegory is personification whereby abstract qualities are given a human shape. It involves a continuous parallel between different levels of meaning in a text.
However, in the novel the preceding chapters to Tick Tock are told in retrospect and Saleem’s abundance of stories make it difficult, not only for the reader, but also for the naïve narratee Padma, to follow his jumps in time and space, as well as his many other digressions. After journeys that have brought Saleem to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Delhi, he retires when he has rediscovered his ayah Mary Pereira in his childhood city, Bombay. She now owns a pickle factory and is able to provide him with whatever he needs, and he has the time and opportunity to pickle his memory and write down the story of his life. The setting in the pickle factory where Saleem recounts his stories are said to be a parallel to the frame story of Arabian Nights. This isevidently an intertextual element used to make suspense both in Arabian Nights, also famous as One Thousand and One Nights, and in Midnight’s Children. But in the film the character of Padma is missing, so the responsibility to understand the situation comes over the watchers. So we can see some threats in the film.
👉 The second point is about characters. There are some characters which are left out in the film adaptation. It is hard to describe every Characters in the film. So the narrator used the major and important Characters in the adaptation.
These are the main characters.
- Satya Bhabha as Saleem Sinai,
- Shriya Saran as Parvati,
- Siddharth Narayan as Shiva,
- Darsheel Safary as Saleem Sinai (as a child),
- Anupam Kher as Ghani,
- Shabana Azmi as Naseem,
- Neha Mahajan as Young Naseem,
- Seema Biswas as Mary,
- Charles Dance as William Methwold,
- Samrat Chakrabarti as Wee Willie Winkie,
- Rajat Kapoor as Aadam Aziz,
- Soha Ali Khan as Jamila,
- Rahul Bose as Zulfikar,
- Anita Majumdar as Emerald,
- Shahana Goswami as Amina,
- Chandan Roy Sanyal as Joseph D'Costa,
- Ronit Roy as Ahmed Sinai,
- Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh,
- Shikha Talsania as Alia,
- Zaib Shaikh as Nadir Khan,
- Sarita Choudhury as Indira Gandhi,
- Vinay Pathak as Hardy,
- Kapila Jayawardena as Governor,
- Ranvir Shorey as Laurel,
- Suresh Menon as Field Marshal,
- G.R Perera as Astrologer.
In the opening scenes we can observe differences in the way the versions address the audience: the novel’s narrator uses the first person to provide, in a deferred and roundabout way, his story; in the film, there is also direct speech, but the narrative proceeds much more unswervingly. The other two versions do not construct a rapport with the audience in such a straightforward way by direct address. In movie, the audience is shown both the historical background on screen and the event of the twin births on stage. Only after these opening scenes does the narrator step in, either as a voiceover or as a character onstage.
The novel and the film thus seem to initially create a more personal rapport with their constructed audiences. It is significant in this respect that the character of Padma, the novel’s original immediate addressee and audience the person who listens to and comments on Saleem’s narrative, and the second main character in the novel, after the protagonist is included in the first two adaptations, but in the film she is supplanted by Rushdie’s voiceover.
Padma’s role in the film was originally offered to the actor Nandita Das, who had worked with Mehta in Fire and Earth, but Das abandoned the project for personal reasons. Rather than looking for a substitute for the role of Padma, this setback was compensated by introducing the voiceover. The choice has been regarded variously as a success and a failure by critics, for example, from the gender perspective. There are indeed grounds for interpreting the substitution of a female voice with a male as problematic; this change may even be attributed to the authorial ego. However that may be, it creates a fundamental difference between the versions.
👉 No Padma: The author–audience bond :-
What happens, then, when there is no Padma, as in the film? How does the narrative proceed when she is not there to probe Saleem to get on with the story
“You better get a move on or you’ll die before you get yourself born”
or to question the validity of his claims
“All the time […] you tricked me ?”
To begin with, Padma’s questioning (and doubting) voice disappears. In the 39 instances wherein the film’s narrator appears, only four present questions, while the remaining are declarative statements. In three of these, the questions are immediately answered by the narrator:
“Why did she marry him so quickly? For solace? For the children they both wanted so much? My mother, Ameena Sinai, in her new incarnation resolved to forget the poet Nadir and fall in love with my father, Ahmed Sinai” ; “Only exile? In exile, I learned about power”; “Who were we? We were the promises of Independence”
The single question that is not answered comes towards the end:
“And what of Shiva, Shiva who was now a wanted man?”
This is also one of the two main differences (including the absence of Padma) between thth film and the novel: in the novel, what happened to Shiva is left uncertain
“To tell the truth, I lied about Shiva’s death. My first out-and-out lie […] I’m still terrified of him”
but in the film he rides into a truck and dies, which is implicit only inasmuch as his body is not shown. One may speculate that the significance of this change resides in the fact that the film is less open to interpretation and, together with the slightly more optimistic ending discussed earlier, turns the gaze from oppressive past to future.
With respect to the impact on reception of having the author in Padma’s role, the use of Rushdie’s voice for the narration has received mixed reviews. One reviewer notes how the voiceover technique makes it feel like Rushdie is sitting next to you in the audience, nudging you in the ribs, over-explaining the story and still expecting you to laugh and cry at the right moments. Another one finds the choice more pleasing: It’s a masterstroke having Rushdie provide the film’s narration. His instantly-recognisable tone reciting his self-penned words render him a comforting guide on this tumultuous journey.
The fact that the voiceover conflates the moment Saleem came from his mother’s womb and the actual historical event of India’s independence takes the audience to a metafictional level if they realize (or know in advance) that the actual person narrating the story was also born around the time of India’s independence, on 19 June 1947, only two months before the cataclysmic subcontinental events of August 1947. In this sense, the film can be interpreted as a semi-autobiographical narrative, one which is adapted by Rushdie himself from his own novel and roughly based on his childhood facts that are emphasized in the movie’s trailers.
👉 The third point is the themes and symbols. The film adapted it very well. Rushdie steered the project of adapting Midnight’s Children into film from the outset, exercising an even tighter creative control than in the earlier adaptations, co-authoring the script and acting as executive producer. Another instance of this greater creative control is the use of his own voice to narrate the film, although the choice itself is attributed to Mehta’s insistence. If we talk about the various themes of the novel we can see this major themes :
Truth and Storytelling
British Colonialism and Postcolonialism
Sex and Gender
Identity and Nationality
Fragments and Partitioning
Religion
And if we talk about the symbols which are used in the novel we can see,
The Silver Spittoon
The silver spittoon is an important symbol used in both art, novel and film. It is given to Amina as part of her dowry by the Rani of Cooch Naheen who is responsible for Saleem’s loss of memory. Even when he has amnesia, however, Saleem continues to cherish the spittoon as if he still understands its historical value. Following the destruction of his family, the silver spittoon is the only tangible remnant of Saleem’s former life, and yet it too is eventually destroyed when Saleem’s house in the ghetto is torn down. Spittoons, once used as part of a cherished game for both old and young, gradually fell out of use: the old men no longer spit their beetlejuice into the street as they tell stories, nor do the children dart in between the streams as they listen. So it can be considered as an important symbol.
The perforated sheet
Knees and nose
The other pivotal symbol is the nose of Saleem. Saleem inherits his rather large, and perpetually congested, nose from his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, who also uses his nose to sniff out trouble. Saleem’s nasal powers begin after an accident in his mother’s washing-chest, in which he sniffs a rogue pajama string up his nose, resulting in a deafening sneeze and the instant arrival of the voices in his head. Saleem’s power of telepathy remains until a sinus surgery clears out his nose “goo.” After his surgery, Saleem is unable to further commune with the other children. Ironically, after Saleem’s nasal congestion is gone, he gains the ability to smell emotions, and he spends much time categorizing all the smells he frequently encounters. In short his all power goes after the operation, but one other ability he gets after operation also.
The themes and symbols are well presented in the film adaptation. We find that the director tried to portray all the things in the film, which Rushdie describes in the novel. Salim's nose created a big issue in the movie, and it had special power that Salim can call his friends through his nose. It seems magical element.
Well some symbols are used very closely in some movies, like Taj Mahal. But Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta haven't took very close up scene of Taj Mahal. That we can see in the movie,
The integrity of the film is assured by Rushdie's own close involvement. The acting in the film, is understated and superb. Satya Bhabha exhibits a tenderness and toughness which is a jarring contrast to Matthew Patel in the peerless Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Shriya Saran and Shahana Goswami are impossibly elegant, and makes one wonder why every wedding isn't Indian. The breakout role may be the one of Darsheel Safary in his precocious portrayal of a 10 year old Saleem.
The film itself is a wondrous palette of colours - with Sri Lanka being the setting for over 64 locations as diverse as Kashmir and Bengal spanning several decades.
Mehta stated that her focus on particular colours and slowly intensifying them were thematic choices. For instance, in the part signifying The Emergency of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, blue particularly resonates over the grim darkness, caressing the viewer's eyes with a sense of calm. And the settlement of India and Pakistan is also the talk of the novel. It is portrayed well in the film adaptation also.
Rushdie himself narrates, his voice exhibiting the calm energy of a man thrilled to bring a work which is almost 30 years old to a new generation. So we can say that it was great combination of various scenes. I recommend you to read the novel. If it isn't possible watch the movie. You will surely enjoy and learn many things.
👉 And the fourth point is the texture of the novel. Well, it is the interconnectedness of narrative technique with the theme. And yes it is well captured. Because there are lots of things in the novel, but we can't capture everything in two or three hours. But the movie tried it's best. We see the good attempt by Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta. The film is not told in chronological order, but it is told in flashback. When Salim remembered something he told the audience and listener. And then come back to real life from that flashback. Whole story is told by Salim. And he described the things that he felt. This is my interpretation of the novel and film adaptation.
👉 We had a screening of the movie in online mode. The initial impression is impressive. Salam Rushdie as the narrator and writer tried to capture it very well in the film. To cover everything in one movie is hard to maintain. When we read a novel it takes a lot of time, but we can watch a movie in 2 or 3 hours. But when we read the whole novel it describes the deep ideas, but the movie can not present everything in comparison to the novel. And Rushdie's novel is the novel which can be presented in web series. But the film adaptation is good. All Characters acted like real life incidents. Their dialogues are also well knighted and have interconnection with each other. We had lots of threates during the movie screening, like Network issue, distraction at home (because we are at home) and errors of hanging mobile also !
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