Midnight's Children
Midnight's Children
NR | 31 August 2012 (USA)
Midnight's Children Trailers

The story of a pair of children born within moments of India gaining independence from England, growing up in the country that is nothing like their parent's generation. A Canadian-British film adaptation of Salman Rushdie's novel of the same name.

Reviews
Greenes Please don't spend money on this.
Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.
arjunflamingfeather The author of Midnight's Children is Salman Rushdie; screenplay's story is his visual guidelines whilst writing. Writing a movie based on pre-existing material is a category: like Winston Churchill who said 'England shall rise 'With' the occassion' implying the war at their doorstep. The wars in 'Midnight's Children' are fiction because Saleem and Shiva are imaginations wording Salman Rushdie's thoughts. Ideas that the cast and crew of 'Midnight Children's' movie have are not all on film because after a moment cinema is like a record that can be accessed. Assessing digital proof before the final cut or Director's cut is the final chance of making adjustments to the final cinema which will be aired in halls where money shall be collected as a revenue. Cyclic thoughts like found in the movie industry brought 'Deepa Mehta' the director to film the screenplay but the producer who bought or rented director and actors finished 'his' movie. The dates that the movie aired in cinema halls are relevant because the documentary of fiction or movie is a collection of fictional person's created by 'Salman Rushdie' and produced for nations under filmography. Bringing persons to appreciate cinema means that the entire visual film that we bought tickets for was watched with the organs that receive information; clue is it is one of the five senses.
Kincho Kincho I have read Midnight's Children many times over the years and wasn't even aware of a movie version until today. It was with trepidation I viewed it as I have always believed it would be an extremely difficult story to convey in film.My verdict is that it is a classic film done with much respect and love for the original story.The performances are almost uniformly excellent as are the locations and period set designs. A surprisingly delightful film in an age of so much dross.
aslonetsky Only occasionally does a movie portray a culture in a time and place that truly succeeds in giving you a sense of what it was like there. I think of Like Water for Chocolate for example. I was totally blown away by this film's ability to somehow transport me back to India, capturing all the craziness, the colours, the confusion, the sensibilities.... I only spent six weeks there but my son who worked there for a year and a half agreed with me. I think that it is a very unusual film for western viewers. The symbolism is so important and rich. We are not watching individuals at all but characters who represent elements of the country that the writer and director are passionate about. The pace and length is absolutely essential to get the feel of how vast the story is. The camera-work is breathtaking, the music is absolutely authentic, I felt that I could even smell India again. I noticed that the reviews by western critics were mostly negative while those from India were the opposite. If you want to enjoy this film, leave your western film expectations at home and come with an openness to a different way of seeing, learning and experiencing. I will encourage everyone I know to treat themselves to this wonderful film.
Murari Vasudevan Having read the novel a few years ago, went and watched it at the London Film Festival. As much as I wanted to love it, it didn't blow me away. The pluses: The acting was good with a good enough cast. Satya Bhabha, Rajat Kapoor, Shahana Goswami and some others (Seema Biswas, for example) were terrific. Shriya, Siddharth, Soha Ali Khan, the usual crowd that you see in many recent Hindi/Tamil films, did their best and I couldn't really find too much fault with them, though I've seen them play the same characters in other films. The story itself is quite powerful The locales were well chosen and you could sometimes feel the vibe of Partition. The minuses: The music (background score) was staid. The screenplay and adaptation to the medium seemed to be the crux of the problems, though. Deepa Mehta (and Rushdie himself) seemed to stick to the book too closely, and weren't very adventurous. At many times it was pure narration, which seems a bit lazy as an adaptation. The film was also 2.5 hours long meaning they left out nothing at the cost of making it a bit boring. Everything was so literal that they lost out on the magic of the writing. Still a normally good film it will typically be marked controversial even though it really isn't. I was just hoping for some distinctiveness and style.