Hello Readers!!
After long period of time once again welcome to my blog.This blog is a response to the thinking activity assigned by our Prof.Dilip Barad sir on the novel and film adaptation “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdiee.Sir has given five points to pondered upon.
About Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s children(novel), is story of Grandfather to son Saleem and another boy Shiva. With the born of independent India at mid night some children were also born and with their grows symbolically growing of India is presented. Movie is like collage of so any things. Many stories goes together with various symbols, hidden meanings and mechanics of the movie. Midnight’s children is like National History in Fictional way. Deepa Mehta try to make it Dreamy and Dramatic. Salman Rushdie is himself screenplay writer, though it is not as good as novel.
Decolonizing of human mind and how we look at freedom struggle or nationalism also is very important. This people who are cross over people hybrid identities like Deepa Mehta, Mira Niar.. They look at history in rather different perspective and which are normally not much in same way and their work hatred r being attacked by Hindutva identities or people.
The film is not very good film, the way Novel has been appreciated time and again and we see that screen play written by same writer of novel yet, even it is not as good as novel. It goes to that idea that when same writer translate the work, it’s not good translation but, it may be not 100% true theory because, writer like Harold Pinter, who was also screen paly writer, but His understanding medium of media and stage very well.
1.First point to ponder upon is narrative technique. How was the narrative technique of the movie adaptation and in the novel ?
Salman Rushdie is undoubtly one of the most famous novelists in presenttime. His second novel Midnight's Children received greater critical acclaimand made Rushdie a famous literary figure in English speaking world. The novelwon for him Booker of Bookers prize in 1993. In the novel Rushdie introduces aninnovator narrative technique which is different from the contemporary writers.He uses the first person narrative through Saleem Sinai, the protagonist of thenovel. Rushdie also makes good use of the device of Magic Realism in Midnight'sChildren. Further Rushdie's use of cinematic elements can clearly be seen inthe novel. All this shows Bombay Cinema's influence on Rushdie and Rushdie'suse of Indianized English is his biggest achievement. His use of Indian worldlike ekdum, angrez, firangee etc. give Indian flavor to the novel. Above all,Rushdie can be considered the master of narrative techniques at present time.
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.
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
Rajesh Khera
Salman Rushdie, narrator
Here is the link for the characters in the novel.Click Here
Here are the list of character from the novel who didn't appear in the film.
-Padma
-Sonny Ibrahim
-Commander Sabarmati
-Lila Sabarmati
-Homy Carrack
-Alice Pereira
-Nalikar Women
-Ramram Sheth
3.The third point is the themes and symbols.
The Silver Spittoon :-
The silver spittoon given to Amina as part of her dowry by the Rani of Cooch Naheen 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 betel juice into the street as they tell stories, nor do the children dart in between the streams as they listen. The spittoon is the symbol of a vanishing era, which, in retrospect, seemed simpler and easier. And so, although Saleem may not be able to recall the specific association between the spittoon and his family, the spittoon maintains its symbolic quality as both a container of memory and source of amnesia.
Knees and nose
Saleem Sinai’s large, bulbous nose is a symbol of his power as the leader of the Midnight Children’s Conference, which is comprised of all children born on the moment of India’s independence from British rule. His nose makes his power of telepathy possible, and this is how he communicates with the other children of midnight (who all have varied powers of their own). 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.
Pickle :-
Pickles are repeatedly mentioned in Midnight’s Children, and while they are often viewed as a phallic symbol, they are generally representative of the power of preservation within Rushdie’s novel. Saleem is the manager of a pickle factory, and he preserves pickles and chutneys each day. He also attempts to preserve his own life story like the pickles in his factory. Saleem largely manages to preserve his life through storytelling, offering a bit of immortality to a dying man, and he also labels and stores each chapter he writes in a pickle jar, so that they may be read later, by his son for example. This connection between pickles and the preservation of stories endures until the very end of the book, when Saleem ceremoniously labels his very last pickle jar as a way of closing out his story and his life as a whole.
The Perforated Sheet :-
In the movie we have seen two times The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz falls in love with his future wife performs several different symbolic functions throughout the novel. Unable to see his future wife as a whole, Aadam falls in love with her in pieces. As a result, their love never has a cohesive unit that holds them together. The second use we see while the performance of singing by Jamila.
4.And the fourth point is the texture of the novel.
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.
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,
5.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.
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