The stroke of Midnight
Otherworldly film based on Rushdie’s book is sprawling metaphor for birth, growth of India
The term “magic realism” doesn’t really make a lot of sense when you break it down, especially if applied to film, where the whole enterprise endeavours to blur the line between the real and the fantastic.
We accept fictional realities as a given in movies. We happily suspend disbelief while the hero dodges bullets, jumps off tall buildings to the tune of James Bond’s thumping bass line and miraculously meets every important stranger crucial to the plot.
Yet “magic realism” is the only way to describe Salman Rushdie’s book about a young man who can conjure the voice of his generation through his nose.
Based on the Booker Prize-winning book by the noted, and notorious, author who survived an Ayatollah’s Children is a sprawling metaphor for the birth and growth of India.
Our hero, Saleem Sinai, was born at the stroke of midnight on Aug.15, 1947, in the same instant as India achieved independence. Because of his magical birth hour, he shares a connection to every other child born in the same breath.
In a real sense, they inspire him, and he respires them. They are all connected, and one way or another, each has an effect on the other’s outcome.
In the book, Saleem’s supernatural ability combined with genuine historical events is one of the reasons Midnight’s Children is considered a prime example of magic realism, but for film director Deepa Mehta, adapting magic realism to the screen presents a central challenge.
The real and the sublime want to merge at every moment, and finding the right tone to float through several layers of history, as well as thick weaves of plot, demands a certain amount of restraint — as well as a completely unbound imagination.
It’s a tough stretch for anyone, but Mehta finds a way of making it work without forcing the fantastic down our throats. Instead, she creates a consistently dreamlike feel for the experience.
Much of this vast task is accomplished through Rushdie’s script and narration. But Mehta lets us wade into the tidal wave of story little by little, beginning with the yarn of a big-nosed doctor who marries a headstrong woman and creates a family of independently minded daughters.
One of these daughters is the “mother” of Saleem, but as the story has no family. A bastard child who is tossed from his father’s home when blood tests suggest marital betrayal, Saleem is not like other kids and feels it every second.
He even looks different as a result of his big honker and bulging temples, and to make matters worse, his nose never stops running.
Because esthetics play a tragically important role in cinema, Mehta makes sure our sad sack hero isn’t too pathetic.
Played by Darsheel Safary as a child and Satya Bhabha as a man, Saleem is often downright cute, and even with the prosthetically enlarged nose, he’s got enough charm and charisma to carry the weight of the narrative.
The movie is long, and without a big bang finale, the whole undertaking feels a bit random. However, if you see Midnight’s Children as an ongoing symbol of India’s evolution, it’s a lot easier to digest because it’s just a bite of a much bigger dish — and a work still in progress.