Movie review: Midnight's Children

Director: Deepa Mehta
Starring: Satya Bhabha, Siddharth

If there was any proof That the CBFC has progressed in This Country, it is in Midnight's Children. Sarita Choudhary, bearing a startling resemblance to Indira Gandhi, is dispensing Shown With The nation's freedoms, sterlising people, demolishing settlements, rounding up Dissidents, setting off a long night without light. In fact Deepa Mehta has remarked in interviews with some surprise on how the film got away with no cuts. She Told As India Today last week, "I do not believe in censorship at all but knowing That was something we had to go through with the film, I can not believe how strong They Were and we came through without a cut. I was shocked. It was very interesting That They Had a historian at the screening who looked at the film and said it was accurate. " The lunatic fringe may be busy painting India as an intolerant society but it's good to note That the Censor Board has grown up, and Does not Have To look over its shoulder at the Gandhi family to see if They Will be offended.

At one point there is a discussion in the movie Between Satya Bhabha's Salim and Siddharth's Shiva. Life Is About Ideas or things? Perhaps Mehta Should Have Chosen to go with ideas, just as Ang Lee chose the notion of Yann Martel's Life of Pi and made it into a gorgeous 3D fantasy. There are some parts in Midnight's Children, the movie, Which are almost as surreal in the book - most Notably Shown When Delhi is under a permanent cloud, the light drowned out for years as it were. But most of it is terribly literal and air has a cottage industry. Granted it's a difficult film to stage, moving from one event to another epic. There's freedom at midnight, the 1971 war, the Emergency years. Yet there is a Feel That the scale could have been bigger, more spectacular.

Mehta tries hard. She's assembled an impressive cast, from veterans Such as Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas and Kulbhushan Kharbanda to surprises Such as Shahana Goswami, Shriya Saran, Soha Ali Khan and Darsheel Safary, who is quite brilliant as the young Salim who has to bear the burden of his father's expectations. Newcomer Satya Bhabha is awfully accented as Salim Sinai, Exchanged at birth with Shiva, played by Siddharth (who tries hard to look like a toughie from the streets who metamorphoses into a war hero). Ronit Roy as Ahmed Sinai looks as if I've strayed from the sets of Udaan, playing Salim's father, who has given up on life. And Soha Ali Khan comes alive Briefly Aao Twist Karein dancing to.

Each era has its signature shorthand - 1950s Mumbai With its genteel tea glass coffee encourages kissery Which, as the posters Mujib Bangladesh is liberated, the grabs of Indira Gandhi speaking from Red Fort.

But just as the truth of freedom is less glorious than the dream, so is the film less magical than the book. I Would Have Settled for less of it, even an abrogated version of it as Mrs Gandhi's war on the 420 Midnight's Children cast as some sort of war Between the State and X-Men. It Would Have possibly been more watchable.