In the long list of books considered to be unfilmable this one has been near the top for some time. Now we have the proof.
Salman Rushdie’s long novel is not so much brought to the screen as cut and pasted and read out by a voiceover. Remember rule 1 of film? Show, don’t tell. From the opening scene a rambling voiceover informs the viewer what is going on and pretty much keeps it up for the next two hours. The result is a story that has a lot of interest and in the hands of a better director and writer, could have been magical. Instead we get moments of inspiration in between a history lecture.
Rushdie himself has adapted his own novel surely a mistake and seems determined to squeeze in the whole thing. It begins on the stroke of midnight when two babies are born at the exact moment India becomes independent from Britain. The nurse swaps the two babies around, knowing that the one from a rich family will look after the pauper’s child. Saleem Sinai becomes not only a middle-class boy but also seems to have powers, as do all the children born at midnight on that night. His parents have bought a house from the barking mad Charles Dance, and he is happy exploring his imaginary world until faced with real poverty in the form of Wee Willie Winkie, a travelling musician whose son is actually the family’s real son.
Saleem’s story then takes him through political protest, the birth of Pakistan, some magic realism and the war with Bangladesh, but at no point do we really feel any sympathy with the boy. There are many fascinating details here Indira Gandhi’s brutal slum-clearing and her apparent reliance on star signs to govern India but nothing ever really sticks. There is a bit of magic realism, a bit of student protest and lots of very fine acting by a great Indian cast, but it never catches fire. Interestingly Gandhi sued Rushdie over a sentence in the book and won her case.
Visually the film is also something of a disappointment there are no memorable shots, just the usual picture postcards of Agra, the muddles cities and seeping slums. And wheneven the story gets any momentum in comes that irritating voiceover again.
Overall verdict: Disappointingly stilted version of Rushdie’s Booker Prize-winning book which attempts an epic sweep of the birth of the independent India and in the end resembles a long history lesson. Some fine acting isn’t enough to save it.
Reviewer: Mike Martin