Boobirt Stylish but barely mediocre overall

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

sergelamarche Beautiful, good idea, but maybe much too long for a single film. Interesting take on the evolution of India but the drama did not take. Some events seems coming out of a magician hat. Something is missing for the film to glue together.

rogerdarlington 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.

dsa ca As I sat through the final gala event of the Indian film festival in Los Angeles, I witness a sea of NRI theatrics to promote and celebrate there film communities beloved cinematic achievements. It is there night to celebrate two of finest exports of not so artistically talented community of Indian Americans in North America. 'Midnight's children' is the movie they are trying to celebrate today. I am saying trying because unfortunate as it may be this one has turned out to be cold turkey.Based on the celebrated novel of the same name by Salman Rushdie the movie version is staunchly conservative as it decidedly sticks honest with the book's narrative. May be Mr. Rushdie did not wish to tinker anything to his beloved book and he is entitled to do whatever he wishes to with its film version. Unfortunately for the audience, Mr. Rushdie along with Miss Deepa Mehta has served something that is too much to consume in approximately two and half hour of the films running time. The movie has a life trajectory beginning with main character Salim's grandfather's love story in British India Kashmir in 1917 and ends in Independent India's Mumbai in the seventies with Salim's young son. In between the movie is a mess of character's coming in and out of the movie with break neck speed.The film is fable and a tribute to the Nehruvian (Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's style of politics) India's broken secular promises. Salim is a boy born at the stroke of midnight of India's Independence from British occupation. He is supposed to be the son of Indian Muslim family but is actually the son of a local Mumbai street singer who had affair with a British gentleman during his empire's final days. The street singer dies during child birth. The hospital nurse Mary, because of her social beliefs regarding the nation's so called Independence, decides to switch the newborn son of the poor street singer to the rich born kid of a Muslim couple.The destinies of the two new born are not only entangled by the switch but also with the gift that they possess along with every other children who are born on the stroke of midnight with a new born nation with promises of its richly diverse population.Each of those new born children are metaphor for the nation's promises of what it can achieve if those natural gifts are used effectively for better means. They all possess different powers with Salim being able to telepathically communicate with each one of the Midnight's Children. While the couple's real kid who ends up with the husband of the street singer is named Shiva who possesses the powerful destructive powers, while Parvati is a magician who is destined to be Salim's soul mate. Salim's destiny is forever bonded with the nation of his birth and hence we are taken to a journey through modern Indian history.The source material for the film is a literary classic, so there is no doubt that Miss Mehta has been brought down by the wait of expectations. She gave no space for any character development and the second rate cast does not do any favor to the films flow. Unfortunately, the worst of the lot is the main lead Satya Babha who plays the grown up Salim. A small actor in American sitcom, Satya did not have any facial expression or emotions that could light up even the most well written scenes. He fails to carry the film on his shoulders and makes it a stretch for the audience to continue with the film. The only noteworthy and perfect though stereotypical performance is Seema Biswas's Miss Mary.Some of the best parts of the novel is the Bangladesh war and Indira Gandhi's emergency days. Unfortunately in the movie version no sense of history is evoked during those sequences and to those who may have very scant knowledge of those events may remain disillusioned.Miss Mehta mentioned during her introductory speech; how Mr. Rushdie got annoyed when some audience member at Toronto film festival compared the film with Forrest Gump. Even I would be annoyed. Forrest Gump maintained a smooth flow even with its long generational trajectory and allowed character development by concentrating on only the main character rather than his entire family tree. But Midnight's Children ends up becoming a fast paced narration of the novel that deserved a better movie version.Mr. Rushdie and Miss Mehta spoiled a perfect opportunity to create a memorable journey through modern Indian history and placed this cobbled screen adaption as footnote in their respective careers.

peter psp The inspiration for the parable of this movie seems to be the fact that Indira Ghandi was advised by an astrologer that people born on the night when India gained independence from Great Britain are dangerous to her. This caused persecution of many of them by some of them. The contact with astrologer and these consequences are a serious accusation directed to IG and that should not be brought up unless it is supportable by facts. The movie is difficult to watch since there is quite much of brutality and of unacceptable behaviour. This is an image of a world in which a human individual is almost meaningless. The fate of the people born on that day is simply a carrier for bitter accusations. Psychically ill people are treated with brutality and mostly without understanding. Many men shown in the movie are anti-heroes (when a boy says to his parents that he hears voices in his head he gets punched, another day a teacher humiliates him and pulls out a bunch of hair from his scalp). It is hard not to have compassion for these desperate people, and it is heart- breaking to see their sufferings. It is even more depressing to realize that all that was inflicted by themselves. Men in this movie are mostly a bit crazy or criminal or have marginal influence on the message of this story. However women are shown in much better light. They love and are less violent. The only one crazy between them is IG. The movie contains an insult addressed at IG. It is constructed in this way: one of characters has symptoms of schizophrenia and he notices that he can control the voices in his head by blowing his nose. Later he has a night dream in which a woman looking like IG blows her nose and blood appears on her handkerchief. The interpretation is clear: IG was crazy like schizophrenics, and the useless persecutions were a result of hallucinations. IG was in power quite long time and of that only one her deed is pulled out and then an insult is levelled at her. I do not want to defend her, for I am ignorant of history of India, but I bet the image of her is very skewed in this movie. This casts an unpleasant shadow on the rest of the movie that begins in colonial palaces and ends in slums of free India. Is this a reasonable image of the 55 years of independence of India? I doubt, the summary must be brighter than that. I share with Rushdie his disapproval of brutality and wars, however if one wanted to criticize just that then this should be somehow balanced by something positive. This movie is a venomous political satire and is scary to watch. I am afraid that the artistic duo will get death threats. Their view of Indian independence is a bit one-sided. However if the image they project is true then it is a sad prophecy addressed to all countries that want to be free of various oppressors or oppressive ideologies. This is a sad prophecy for Arab countries. An "exception" my be Syria, where they begun from mayhem instead to administer it in small doses, like in IG's prisons. The best way to enjoy this movie is not to understand it. This movie does not provide for the viewer to escape the desperation of the Authors. However I liked the music. I bet that $1 Rushdie received for the film rights is a gross overpayment. What is the point to invest so much money and good work into something so depressing? who will pay for seeing gradually more and more dense desperation?