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Midnight's Children

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Midnight's Children

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Summary

Drama based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Salman Rushdie, starring Satya Bhabha. Two babies born at the moment of India's independence are swapped in the delivery room. One goes back to a rich household, the other to a poor one. But each possesses a magical gift allowing him to commune with other "midnight's children" as the newly re-constituted country struggles to find its place in the world.

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IMDB

Review

A star rating of 3 out of 5.

Brian Pendreigh

Salman Rushdie himself wrote the script for this adaptation of his prize-winning novel about a group of Indian children with superpowers whose lives interweave with the history of the subcontinent in the decades after independence. And that is the main problem. It's as if Rushdie, who also executive-produced, has tried to pack too much of the novel into the film. It feels cluttered and episodic. At the same time Rushdie rather loses his focus on the children, whose powers resemble those of traditional comic-book superheroes, though their environment could not be farther from Batman's Gotham City. The protagonist, Saleem (Satya Bhabha), is born with telepathic powers and a continually runny nose. He is the son of poor street performers, but is switched at birth with Shiva (Siddharth), the child of a wealthy businessman and one of the most interesting characters in the book. But Shiva's story is dramatically curtailed here, while that of Saleem's family is left comparatively intact. The most glaring misjudgement however is Rushdie's voiceover, which continually describes what is actually being shown on screen. Nonetheless the film is stunningly beautiful. And the story retains at least some of the elements that made the novel so special in its imagination, ambition and scope.

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6.2/10

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Credits

Cast

rolenameSaleem SinaiSatya BhabhaAmina Sinai nee Mumtaz AzizShahana GoswamiAadam AzizRajat KapoorMary PereiraSeema BiswasParvatiShriya SaranShivaSiddharth Ahmed SinaiRonit RoyZulfikarRahul Boseyoung Saleem Sinai Darsheel SafaryPicture SinghKulbhushan KharbandaEmerald AzizAnita Majumdar

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Crew

rolenameDirectorDeepa Mehta

Details

Theatrical distributor

EOne Entertainment

Released on

2012-12-21

Languages

English | Hindi | Bangla | Urdu

Guidance

Some violence.

Available on

DVD

Formats

Colour

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