Hello readers...
In this blog I would like to talk about the famous novel Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. This is the blog is the part of my thinking activity. In this blog I would like to ponder some points which is given by the our professor Dilip sir.
So first We through some light on novel.
Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by author Salman Rushdie. It portrays India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and the partition of India. It is considered an example of postcolonial, postmodern, and magical realist literature. The story is told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, and is set in the context of actual historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.
Midnight's Children won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981.[1] 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.[2][3] In 2003, the novel was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novels".[4] It was also added to the list of Great Books of the 20th Century, published by Penguin Books.
Points to ponder:-
1 Narrative technique (changes made in film adaptation - for eg. absence of Padma, the Nati, the listener, the commenter - What is your interpretation?)
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.
However, in the novel the preceding chapters to Tick Tock are told in retrospect and Saleem’s abundance of stories make it difficult, not only for the reader, but also for the naïve narratee Padma, to follow his jumps in time and space, as well as his many other digressions. After journeys that have brought Saleem to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Delhi, he retires when he has rediscovered his ayah Mary Pereira in his childhood city, Bombay. She now owns a pickle factory and is able to provide him with whatever he needs, and he has the time and opportunity to pickle his memory and write down the story of his life. The setting in the pickle factory where Saleem recounts his stories are said to be a parallel to the frame story of Arabian Nights. This isevidently an intertextual element used to make suspense both in Arabian Nights, also famous as One Thousand and One Nights, and in Midnight’s Children. But in the film the character of Padma is missing, so the responsibility to understand the situation comes over the watchers. So we can see some threats in the film.
2. Characters (how many included, how many left out - Why? What is your interpretation?)
Answer :-
Film included characters :-
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 Jayawardena as Governor
Ranvir Shorey as Laurel
Suresh Menon as Field Marshal
G.R Perera as Astrologer
Rajesh Khera
Salman Rushdie, narrator
Original book consists of more than 89 characters and in the film only 26 characters are included. ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Rushie is a very interesting book and it consists of box within box technique. Three books consist of lots of stories and in film adaptation it will be hard to include each and everything and mentioning every story is hard. So in the film adaptation there is only the main story of our protagonist.
3.Themes and Symbols (if film adaptation is able to capture themes and symbols?)
The film adapted it very well. Rushdie steered the project of adapting Midnight’s Children into film from the outset, exercising an even tighter creative control than in the earlier adaptations, co-authoring the script and acting as executive producer. Another instance of this greater creative control is the use of his own voice to narrate the film, although the choice itself is attributed to Mehta’s insistence. If we talk about the various themes of the novel we can see this major themes :
1)Truth and Storytelling
2)British Colonialism and Postcolonialism
3)Sex and Gender:-
4)Identity and Nationality:-
5)Fragments and Partitioning
6)Religion
And if we talk about the symbols which are used in the novel we can see,
Symbols:-
The Silver Spittoon:-
The silver spittoon is an important symbol used in both art, novel and film. It is given to Amina as part of her dowry by the Rani of Cooch Naheen who is responsible for Saleem’s loss of memory. Even when he has amnesia, however, Saleem continues to cherish the spittoon as if he still understands its historical value. Following the destruction of his family, the silver spittoon is the only tangible remnant of Saleem’s former life, and yet it too is eventually destroyed when Saleem’s house in the ghetto is torn down. Spittoons, once used as part of a cherished game for both old and young, gradually fell out of use: the old men no longer spit their beetlejuice into the street as they tell stories, nor do the children dart in between the streams as they listen. So it can be considered as an important symbol.
The perforated sheet :-
In the movie we have seen two times The perforated sheet through which Aadam Aziz falls in love with his future wife performs several different symbolic functions throughout the novel. Unable to see his future wife as a whole, Aadam falls in love with her in pieces. As a result, their love never has a cohesive unit that holds them together.
The second use we see while the performance of singing by Jamila.
Knees and nose :-
The other pivotal symbol is the nose of Saleem. Saleem inherits his rather large, and perpetually congested, nose from his grandfather, Aadam Aziz, who also uses his nose to sniff out trouble. Saleem’s nasal powers begin after an accident in his mother’s washing-chest, in which he sniffs a rogue pajama string up his nose, resulting in a deafening sneeze and the instant arrival of the voices in his head. Saleem’s power of telepathy remains until a sinus surgery clears out his nose “goo.” After his surgery, Saleem is unable to further commune with the other children. Ironically, after Saleem’s nasal congestion is gone, he gains the ability to smell emotions, and he spends much time categorizing all the smells he frequently encounters. In short his all power goes after the operation, but one other ability he gets after operation also.
The themes and symbols are well presented in the film adaptation. We find that the director tried to portray all the things in the film, which Rushdie describes in the novel. Salim's nose created a big issue in the movie, and it had special power that Salim can call his friends through.
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?)
Well, it is the interconnectedness of narrative technique with the theme. And yes it is well captured. Because there are lots of things in the novel, but we can't capture everything in two or three hours. But the movie tried it's best. We see the good attempt by Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta. 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 he described the things that he felt. This is my interpretation of the novel and film adaptation.
Well some symbols are used very closely in some movies, like Taj Mahal. But Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta haven't took very close up scene of Taj Mahal. That we can see in the movie,
I take some screenshots from thi movie screening:-
5. What is your aesthetic experience after watching the screening?
We had a movie screening in online mode of this movie.
The initial impression is impressive. Salam Rushdie as the narrator and writer tried to capture it very well in the film. To cover everything in one movie is hard to maintain. When we read a novel it takes a lot of
time, but we can watch a movie in 2 or 3 hours. But when we read the whole novel it describes the deep ideas, but the movie can not present everything in comparison to the novel. And Rushdie's novel is the novel which can be presented in web series. But the film adaptation is good. All Characters acted like real life incidents. Their dialogues are also well knighted and have interconnection with each other.
Here is movie...
Thank you....
No comments:
Post a Comment