| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| BaftaBaby |
Posted - 12/25/2012 : 12:31:03
A question before we begin - What do the following have in common: Ronald Reagan, Chairman Mao, Tony Blair, and Indira Ghandi? They all consulted astrologers before making political decisions. To see the relevance to this film, read on.
With a screenplay extracted from his own novel, Salmon Rushdie had to pack nearly 450 pages into about 2� hours. Sadly, his own material runs away from him. Even his presence as the film's narrator cannot grip the reins.
Seasoned director Deepa Mehta had to reinvent herself as a cattle herder to contain all the twists and turns and get the story's beasts safely into a holding pen. She doesn't always manage, and some significant strays get away.
It's interesting to note that before it was cancelled about 15 years ago ostensibly because of Muslim objections, the BBC was in development with a five-part miniseries based on the book.
Rushdie's much lauded novel treats nothing less than the decades-long struggle of India's transition to post-colonialism and the subsequent battle to maintain control of neighbouring Pakistan, which, in turn, breaks off from its Eastern flank to become Bangladesh.
That's some canvas on which to impose the kind of drama which might provide points of identification for movie-goers.
And, given that global distribution studios like 20th Century Fox need to attract ticket sales from many millions more than are already familiar with the sub-continent's history, such a complex story needs something other than a poli-sci class to engage, if not actually fulfil expectations.
What intrigued about the novel was its reliance on magical realism. Which was wholly appropriate given Eastern literary tradition from the ancient stories of Egypt, Babylon, China, Japan, Mongolia, Tibet, and India itself.
In this case there are two elements of strong magic that propel the narrative. One is an acceptance that people, living and dead, carry around a spiritual dimension apart from their physical bodies. And that certain people are somehow able to interact with these amorphous manifestations.
The other key magical element relates to stage magic, trickery, and unexplained phenomenon as practised by performers and those branded as witches.
Young Saleem Sinai discovers he's got the former power. He can communicate with the several manifestations of those born at precisely the same hour as he - which turns out to be the exact moment at which India was awarded its independence - midnight of 15 August 1947. These are called Midnight's Children. They all have various magical powers and each becomes entwined in Saleem's own story, both in a personal sense and as representing wider political machinations.
Saleem has been born into a very well-connected family at the same time as another baby boy is delivered in the same maternity ward. This second boy's mother is a travelling performer and dirt poor. It later transpires that there are suspicions about each baby's actual parentage.
And, it won't spoil anything to say that for various anti-authoritarian political motivations, the babies are swapped by a nurse, and subsequently raised into completely different lives from those anticipated.
How each boy turns inside out his assigned social role, how they influence each other through their special powers, and how their lives echo the political changes of their homelands - all combine to form the narrative.
Just like Mark Twain's tale of The Prince and the Pauper, the plot allows legitimate questions of true identity and the impotence to joust with rule-makers.
Which gets us back to Indira Ghandi and some of her decisions, seemingly so very far removed from the lives of the two boys, their families, and their contemporaries. Upon the advice of her astrological interpreters, she enhanced her near totalitarian power by declaring The Emergency. This pre-emptive so-called justice sanctioned the destruction by fire of slums which were destined to produce her future mortal enemies. In Rushdie's story Saleem and his family are living there.
So, are they destroyed in the conflagration? Well, magic realism takes up the tale.
But in the end the real story is too unwieldy for a cine-telling. Though Meeta does her significant best to illustrate the context -backed especially by Giles Nuttgens' photography, and a passle of good actors [particularly Indian theatrical legend Seema Biswas as the very underused Nurse] - those story strays continue to wander.
You'll never catch them, so go along for the ride and then go get a nice curry.
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