Midnight's Children (2012)

A pair of children, born within moments of India gaining independence from Britain, grow up in the country that is nothing like their parent's generation.

Director:

Deepa Mehta

Writers:

Salman Rushdie (screenplay), Salman Rushdie (based on a book by)

Stars:

Rajat Kapoor, Vansh Bhardwaj, Anupam Kher

4 wins & 8 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Rajat Kapoor	...	Aadam Aziz
Vansh Bhardwaj	...	Boatman
Anupam Kher	...	Ghani
Neha Mahajan	...	Young Naseem
Dhritiman Chatterjee	...	Mian Abdullah (as Dhritiman Chaterji)
Kusum Haidar	...	Rani of Cooch Naheen (as Kusum Haider)
Zaib Shaikh	...	Nadir Khan
Kabir Singh Chowdhry	...	Mian's Assassin
Shabana Azmi	...	Naseem
Anita Majumdar	...	Emerald
Shahana Goswami	...	Mumtaz / Amina
Shikha Talsania	...	Alia
Rahul Bose	...	Zulfikar
Hasitha Samarasekara	...	Adjutant
Ronit Roy	...	Ahmed Sinai

Storyline

A pair of children, born within moments of India gaining independence from Britain, grow up in the country that is nothing like their parent's generation.

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Plot Keywords:

children | india | screenplay adapted by author | f rated | factory owner | 

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Taglines:

A child and country were born at midnight once upon a time

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Genres:

Drama

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Certificate:

TV-14

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

Canada UK

Language:

English Hindi Urdu

Release Date:

26 December 2012 (UK)

Also Known As:

Hijos de la media noche

Filming Locations:

Sri Lanka

Box Office

Opening Weekend USA:

$12,200, 28 April 2013

Gross USA:

$190,022

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$1,243,980

Company Credits

Production Co:

David Hamilton Productions, Hamilton Mehta Productions, Number 9 Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

146 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

According to the "Sri Lanka Mirror," filming shut down for four days in March as the Iranian Embassy in Colombo objected to author Salman Rushdie's participation. Filming resumed after director Deepa Mehta met with Sri Lanka President, Mahinda Rajapaksa. He, in turn, then spoke with the Iranian Embassy.

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Goofs

General Zulifkar is shown to surrender to his old friend Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora. In fact it was Lieutenant General Amir Abdullah Khan Niazi who surrendered to the Indian army.

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Soundtracks

Anything You Want To Be
Written by Seema Biswas
Performed by Samrat Chakrabarti

User Reviews

An ambitious work of moderate success

Salman Rushdie's epic novel was published in 1981 but it was not until 2003, when I was on a holiday in India, that I read this ambitious and challenging work. It has taken until 2013 - ironically the same year as the film version of another Booker Prize novel with an Indian theme, "The Life Of Pi" - to reach the big screen. One can understand why, because the span of Rushie's book is enormous - so many characters and so many events over a period of 60 years - and the style is so special - his own version of magical realism - that it was clearly a huge and complicated task.

But it largely works. Obviously the film has to be more accessible and the material more manageable, but the cinematography (it was shot in Sri Lanka) and the music (the original score is Nitin Sawhney) are wonderfully atmospheric additions to the story. Immense credit must go to Rushdie himself who wrote the screenplay (as well as acting as narrator), since it cannot have been easy to simplify his own long (460 pages) and rich text, but the result is a film that is immensely faithful to both the narrative and the tone of the novel. Director Deepa Mehta - another Indian now living abroad (Canada) - has crafted a grandiose tale that is as far from Bollywood as Hollywood which means that sadly it will not have a huge audience in any continent.

Clearly the film has been made with a lot of reverence for the novel and the nation, but it lacks pace and heart. The children of the title are those born in the first 24 hours of India's independence at midnight on 17 August 1947 and Rushdie's fantastical invention is to give these children different special powers. As a film, so many characters and so much history means that there are no real stand-out performances (indeed some of the acting is weak) and the real star of the movie is India itself - an exotic charmer who promised so much and has disappointed so much.