I am Nidhi Dave student of Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University. Here i wrote my understanding of my thinking Activity. This blog is response of my thinking Activity given by professor, Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i am write about the ans of Midnight's Children film Screening.
Midnight's Children:
To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world."
—Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children.
Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.
Midnight's Children sold over one million copies in the UK alone and won the Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. In 2003 the novel appeared at number 100 on the BBC's The Big Read poll which determined the UK's "best-loved novels" of all time.
About Author:
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Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie[a] CH FRSL (born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magical realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent.Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
About film ‘ Midnight’s children’
Midnight's Children is a 2012 film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's 1981 novel of the same name. The film features an ensemble cast of Satya Bhabha, Shriya Saran, Siddharth Narayan, Ronit Roy, Anupam Kher, Shabana Azmi, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Seema Biswas, Shahana Goswami, Samrat Chakrabarti, Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan, Anita Majumdar and Darsheel Safary. With a screenplay by Rushdie and directed by Deepa Mehta, the film began principal photography in Colombo, Sri Lanka, in February 2011 and wrapped in May 2011. Shooting was kept a secret as Mehta feared protests by Islamic fundamentalist groups.
The film was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, the Vancouver International Film Festival, and the BFI London Film Festival. The film was also a nominee for Best Picture and seven other categories at the 1st Canadian Screen Awards, winning two awards.
1,Narrative technique (changes made in film adaptation - for eg. absence of Padma, the Nati, the listener, the commenter - What is your interpretation?)
Ans, This novel and the Film adaptation both narrative techniques are different and also both the story and film adaptation also different because both the way the listener and speaker are different.
The narrative style is us pickled with lots of masala of chutney. Indian chutney, Indian masala being added into that when we see that aspect also in a story.
Salman Rushdie uses many narrative techniques in their story. Let's discuss it. And he also used Western Postmodern Devices And Indian (Eastern) Oral Narratological Methods.
Russian Dolls
Russian Dolls we can see that these dolls are doll within the doll and it is going with like story within the story so it can be apt metaphor for it.
Chinese Boxes
In literature a Chinese box structure refers to a frame narrative, a novel or drama that is told in the form of a narrative inside a narrative, giving views from different perspectives. Examples like Mary Shalley's Frankenstein and Heart of Darkness.
Indian Oral Narratological methods Panchatantra
In the Panchatantra, there are the stories of animals (Fables) to teach the princes of the King Sudarshan and Amarshakti like three sons named Bahushakti, Ugrashakti and Shakti.
Vishnu Sharma (Brahmin) is there to teach them the morals and lessons to helping them to build up the ability of ruling because they were the dumb by their early childhood. Here the story is told in the frame and within the frame.
Kathasaritasagar:
In the Kathasaritasagar, there is story also multiple layers of story within a story.
Baital - Pachisi:
Twenty-five stories are there. These are the stories of legends within the frame story, from India. Basically, this is the story of Vikram Aditya promising a sorcerer that he will capture Vetala. Then the story starts with one frame.
There is also the story of Sihasan Battisi and in that also many stories exist. As all thirty-two dolls tell the stories.
Alif Laila – Arabian Nights:
In this story we find references of Arebian nights, which is a story about the one thousand one hundred stories in that book. Here we can find many examples and connect it with our narrative because here the speaker Shahrazad is telling the stories to the listener Shahryar, same like in Midnight’s Children, the speaker Saleem and the listener Padma.
Ramayana and Mahabharata:
Valmiki is the narrator of Ramayana and Ved Vyasa is the narrator of Mahabharata. We find that Ramayana and Mahabharata both are books related to story within a story .
In the movie ‘ Midnight’s Children’ so many changes had been made by the director. So many characters are not included and there is also a slight change in narrative technique also. In the original text the story is told by the protagonist himself and the story is listened to by Padma. This technique is connected with Bharatmuni’s ‘ Natya Shastra. It means here Saleem is Nat and Padma is Nati. In film adaptation this method is changed and here Saleem tells the story but the audience plays the role of nati. This is a narrative technique of midnight's Children.
2, Characters (how many included, how many left out - Why? What is your interpretation?
Ans, Here are the Characters in the movie...
- Satya Bhabha as Saleem Sinai
- Shriya Saran as Parvati
- Siddharth Narayan as Shiva
- Darsheel Safary as Saleem Sinai (as a child)
- Anupam Kher as Ghani
- Shabana Azmi as Naseem
- Neha Mahajan as Young Naseem
- Seema Biswas as Mary
- Charles Dance as William Methwold
- Samrat Chakrabarti as Wee Willie Winkie
- Rajat Kapoor as Aadam Aziz
- Soha Ali Khan as Jamila
- Rahul Bose as Zulfikar
- Anita Majumdar as Emerald
- Shahana Goswami as Amina
- Chandan Roy Sanyal as Joseph D'Costa
- Ronit Roy as Ahmed Sinai
- Kulbhushan Kharbanda as Picture Singh
- Shikha Talsania as Alia
- Zaib Shaikh as Nadir Khan
- Sarita Choudhury as Indira Gandhi
- Vinay Pathak as Hardy
- Kapila Jeyawardena as Governor
- Ranvir Shorey as Laurel
- Suresh Menon as Field Marshal
- G.R Perera as Astrologer
- Salman Rushdie, Narrator
Here is the list of characters from the novel who didn't appear in the film.
- Padma
- Sonny Ibrahim
- Commander Sabarmati
- Lila Sabarmati
- Homy Carrack
- Alice Pereira
- Nalikar Women
- Ramram Sheth
Here, we find that Padma is the most important character in the novel but in the film her character is not included and there he uses Parvati as the main character. So, we find lots of different characters in novels and films also.
3. Themes and Symbols (if film adaptation is able to capture themes and symbols?)
Ans, Themes :
1,Truth and Storytelling:
Self-proclaimed writer and pickle-factory manager Saleem Sinai is dying—cracking and crumbling under the stress of a mysterious illness—but before he does, he is determined to tell his story. With the “grand hope of the pickling of time,” Saleem feverishly pens his autobiography, preserving his stories like jars of chutney, searching for truth and meaning within them.
2,British Colonialism and Postcolonialism:
Born at exactly midnight on the eve of India’s independence from British colonialism, Saleem Sinai is the first free native citizen born on Indian soil in nearly a hundred years. After a century of British rule, in addition to a century of unofficial imperialism before that, Saleem’s birth marks the end of a two-hundred-year British presence in India. Using their considerable power and influence, the British impose their Western culture and customs onto the Indian people, suppressing and erasing India’s own rich culture to such an extent that, even after their official exit, an undeniable Western presence remains. The postcolonial India of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children underscores the difficulties of navigating a cultural existence that has been largely erased and permanently altered by a foreign, dominant power.
3, Sex and Gender:
Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a harsh critique of the gender-related power struggles of postcolonial Indian society. After generations of purdah—the belief that Muslim and Hindu women should live separately from society, behind a curtain or veil, to stay out of the sight of men—postcolonial women are encouraged to become “modern Indian women” and remove their veils.
4, Identity and Nationality:
From the moment Saleem Sinai is born on the eve of India’s independence from Great Britain, he becomes the living embodiment of his country. Saleem is India, and his identity metaphorically represents the identity of an entire nation; however, Saleem’s identity is complicated and conflicted. A nation, generally understood as the same people living in the same place, only loosely applies to India’s diverse population. Instead, multiple religions, languages, and political beliefs divide postcolonial India into a nation of very different people living in the same place, making one unifying national identity virtually impossible. Saleem—and by proxy, the country he represents—is one of many characters within Midnight’s Children struggling with a conflicted identity, through which Rushdie ultimately argues against the creation of a single unifying national identity for the newly independent India.
5, Fragments and Partitioning
Following their 1947 independence from British rule, India begins to break up in a process known as partitioning. British India splits along religious lines, forming the Muslim nation of Pakistan and the secular, but mostly Hindu, nation of India. India continues to fracture even further, dividing itself based on language and class. Meanwhile, Saleem Sinai, the living embodiment of India, is also cracking—and dying.
Symbols:
There are very interesting symbols given in the entire novel that are considered as allegories of India. So some children are born at midnight and then India is also born at midnight. Saleem Senai who is the protagonist and who is born at midnight with whom India’s story is also described.Whatever happened in the novel has actually happened in India but it is interpreted in a different way. The events that happened, it’s real events that happened in India. Salman Rushdie’s Way of looking , it may not be fair and He says that when we read meta narratives of the past we also have to believe.
Interesting Symbols in Film:
1, The Silver Spittoon:
Normally spittoon is used for spit but here it used as memory of something but the memory itself become an amnesia. Stroke of it over Saleem become the reason his lost of memory. Amnesia and Memory become debatable point. What we remember, how we remember, what is made to forgotten is very interestingly happening through out literature also.
2, Nose:
Fantastic Elements like Different sense of smell, children who born on that same night can meet through this sense and only who can call them who is born exact at 12.00 pm of night, others can only participate and in this Nose is symbolically presented here India’s nose- culture, heritage, history with flight. Father not believe in all that and operation of nose closed the door of that meetings for forever.
3, Magic Realism:
Magic Realism is something which is part of people’s life and that is become unique style of writing in literature. This style came not from western Writers, who believe in pure realism. They believe that Novel should be written with realism . Canon of literature is when we look at novel it says that it should be reality otherwise it is known as romance.
Magic realism is part of plot and style of movie. It shows lived experience of people of third world country under colonizers. In movie Parvati who knows magic called by people as witch. Because they think magic is craft of illusion. Parvati used to believe in her magic. She has one disappear box also which she used to save Saleem and her child. There is every time absurdity in marriage. Science and superstition has simultaneously shown in the movie.
4, Pickles:
Pickles are repeatedly mentioned in Midnight’s Children, and while they are often viewed as a phallic symbol, they are generally representative of the power of preservation within Rushdie’s novel. Saleem is the manager of a pickle factory, and he preserves pickles and chutneys each day. He also attempts to preserve his own life story like the pickles in his factory. Saleem largely manages to preserve his life through storytelling, offering a bit of immortality to a dying man, and he also labels and stores each chapter he writes in a pickle jar, so that they may be read later, by his son for example. This connection between pickles and the preservation of stories endures until the very end of the book, when Saleem ceremoniously labels his very last pickle jar as a way of closing out his story and his life as a whole.
4. The texture of the novel (What is the texture of the novel? Well, it is the interconnectedness of narrative technique with the theme. Is it well captured?)
Ans, Midnight’s children’ consist the theme like The Single and the Many The Unreliability of Memory and Narrative Destruction vs. Creation. The film is not told in chronological order, but it is told in flashback. When Salim remembered something he told the audience and listener. And then come back to real life from that flashback. Whole story is told by Salim and listener are Padma but the film Salim are story taler and the audience are listener.
5, What is your aesthetic experience after watching the screening?
Ans, My experience after watching this movie is very good, as there are a lot of events in this movie that are woven with real life. This movie tries to show what the situation was like with imagination and history. Speaking out against politics was a big challenge. Emergency was imposed by Indira Gandhi at that time. It was not an easy task but writing such a novel in the face of politics at that time was a big challenge. Which Salman Rushdie has done. Salman's midnight children novels have become very popular. This novel tells the same story but the way of telling the story changes. So like reading this novel. There is a lot of adaptation in the film so I love watching this film.
Thank you.
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