MOVIE REVIEW- "Midnight's Children" A Film by Deepa Mehta

Hello Readers,

As a part of academics we arranged a movie screening of "Midnight's Children
and this blog is a part of our co-curricular activity of our department. 

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The Movie “Midnight’s Children” is directed by Deepa Mehta which is based on the famous novel by booker prize winner Salman Rushdie. In this movie we can find historical facts and magic realism.



The movie version of Midnight’s Children is all about historical events like partition of India and Pakistan and Emergency of 1975 in India. It is a story of two boys who were born at the stroke of midnight of 14th August 1947. Here we can also say that it was a birth of two nations India and Pakistan. These two children have super power of communication through their thoughts. One is born in “rich family” and second is in “poor family”. There is a dialogue “A rich need to be poor and poor need to be rich” according to this the rich one will live in utter poverty and the poor will live grow up in rich family. There is a nurse “Marry” who interchanged both the children “Shiva” and “Saleem” because she is also facing the poverty. Shiva took birth in the home of rich parents and Saleem took birth in the home of poor parents. Shiva is a biological child of Ahmed Sinai and Mumtaz (Amina Sinai) and Saleem is a biological child of William Methwold and Vanita. Here we can say that there are many religions in this movie for example: Marry belongs to Christianity, Saleem belongs to Islam and Shiva belongs to Hinduism. Saleem and Shiva they both are not aware of their biological parents and when they got to know about their biological parents and their real identity as well as the situation got worsen. But in the end Shiva gets the power and Saleem is a victim. Richness always shows power, here I would like to quote “when there is money, there is a power”. Richness is all about prosperity but poor people have to struggle a lot. In this movie we can see that Mr. Sinai always wants to see his child as rich and successful and so he always used to scold him that “he is not my blood”. There are many scenes which rejects the idea of postcolonial concept for example Saleem’s mother Amina have and extra marital affair with someone else. This film shows three generations like son, father and grandfather. We can find  symbolism like thundering of clouds at the time of birth of midnight’s children which symbolizes that something bad will happen. In this movie we can see the technique of magic realism: this technique is used by Salman Rushdie is very well presented in the film by Deepa Mehta. Mother’s can visit dreams of her child and know what is happening with them. Parvati who belongs to Bangladesh is also the magician who has big basket which she uses to hide Saleem and her son. She spells magic “Abracadabra” is used to give effect of magic. India is a country of snake charmers and magicians.


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