Midnight’s Children
Midnight’s Children has hit the big screen this week as Salman Rushdie’s 1981 novel has been adapted for the big screen.
Deepa Mehta is in the director’s chair for the movie and she has teamed up with Rushdie write the screenplay for the film.
Salman Rushdie, Deepa Mehta and actor Satya Bhabha were in London earlier this year to promote the film and we caught up them to chart about the film.
- Deepa what was it that struck you about the novel when you first read it that made you want to make it into a film?
Deepa Mehta: The story as it is about the magic realism, the search for family, identity and Saleem Sinai himself.
- And Salman this is not the first time that someone has tried to adapt this novel into a film, or a TV series in fact, when did you first meet Deepa? And why did you think she was the right person to entrust your baby to?
Salman Rushie: Well I was invited to a screening of Water in New York and I really loved it - she heard I really loved it. Then I had to interview her for television and I we then got to know each other over a couple of years.
We gradually got to know each other well and we discussed working together - we also talked about other novels as possibilities to do. Then she asked about Midnight’s Children.
And I could just see her passion for the story and that it felt personal to them and I believe that people direct good films when it is personal to them and not because it is just a famous book.
I think that it was clear that that was so and so I thought ‘sounds perfect to me’ and that was four and a half years ago.
- Satya what was your connection to the book and when did you read it for the first time?
Satya Bhabha: This book has been a large part of my life and a large part of my family’s life for a long time. This is the Bombay that my father grew up in and the Bombay that I have been hearing about for many years.
My father use to tell a story of about a guy that use to sit on the corner between home and school and he use to sing ‘you are my sunshine, my only sunshine’. And then I read the book when I was ten years old and there is this character Wee Willie Winkie who is very similar.
So it is a book that has spent a lot to me and has been an influence on my family and on my life for many years.
- Salman you wrote the book when you were twenty eight, I won’t ask how old you are now, connected to that you had cut down your story into the screenplay so I was wondering how you chose what to cut out? Was it to do with the fact that there were things that you had written back then that were no longer relevant and so that was why they had to go?
SR: No it wasn’t that at all it was just a question of finding the narrative line that most clearly went through the book. In the book Saleem’s mother’s family she has not only two sisters but two brothers as well but in the film the brothers have disappeared - I am sorry to say as I was quite fond of them.
But the story of the sisters seemed to be indispensable as without it you can’t tell the story of the book and the story of the brothers you felt that you could separate that.
The book is also going off in all sorts of different directions and tells all kinds of stories but with film you have be more clear about the line that you are following through. The process of selection was based on ‘what is it that allows us to tell the central narrative line of the book?’
- Just quickly going back to age is it strange…
SR: I am sixty five. One of the things that allowed me to be the scriptwriter was the fact that there was such a long gap - if it was a book that I had just written I would not have done the adaptation or been the best person to do it.
But because this was my younger self I could look back on what this guy did all those years ago. There were moments when I thought ‘gosh that is good’ and at other points I thought ‘not so much’. But I think having that distance from the book allowed me to do this.
- Deepa you were of one mind of how to proceed with the translation of the book.
When we gained the rights he (Salman) did not want to write the screenplay at all - he was really reluctant. And so we went back and forth between us about it.
But as Salman has said I totally agree with the fact that there was this distance as well as the way that Salman could be disrespectful to his own work - in the nicest possible way - which would have been very difficult for another screenwriter.
He has got a really great cinematic sense and loves movies and so it just felt natural. I just said ‘Salman lets go away ad write separately what we think the narrative flow of the film should be’ and we got back together two weeks later and they were very very similar. So it was great that we had a very similar vision.
SR: I think both of us were a little nervous about sitting down and working together and so that was a very reassuring thing because it was weird thinking ‘is he thinking about this down the same lines?’ So we realised that we could do this.
- How do you feel about where India is today in 2012 given that you have got the release of this film? Does it suggest that it is on the fast track to democracy at this point?
SR: Well India is a democracy but it is a flawed democracy. I think one of the great things about India is the pride the people take in their vote - there are much higher voting percentages in India than there are in the United States.
But it is a flawed democracy and there are certain people in India who have complained a lot about corruption and that is a big subject there. I think that this is just a book that has been well liked in India for thirty years and now it is a film.
What I think is great is the cast are very excited and Indian audiences will be very excited about this cast as while many of them are not household names outside of India many of them are household names in India.
So for an Indian movie this is an all star cast and I think many people are very excited to see how this film is with this wonderful cast.
- How have you found the response to the movie?
SR: There as this gentleman sat next to me at the first screening of the film and when the lights came up he tears on his checks. And I turned to him and said ‘I am sorry I made you cry’ and he said the most lovely thing he said ‘these are tears of beauty’ - I thought what could be a better review for a film?
I have watched audiences in the United States, Canada and now here respond to the film and they have all gone the same way - they have been moved by it.
- Salman you do the voiceover for the film so I was wondering when that came into play?
SR: Quite late.
DM: Very late.
SR: Initially we thought we would do it without a voiceover and just make the film.
DM: It worked without it and in no sense was it an exposition or helped with the through line. I think it was something incredibly selfish and feeling that I really wanted to hear Salman’s language as the lines of that voiceover are to die for.
SR: One of the rules that we had was the voiceover was not there to tell you what was going on - as you were seeing that anyway - it was there to add another layer.
Satya Bhabha: There is a sense of direction and when you hear it now there is a through line because you know that the story is not being told by a twenty eight year old but an older Saleem.
DM: I remember when we were in Sri Lank and I asked Satya to just read a bit of the voiceover, he did, and it was so obvious at that point that we needed an older Saleem. I asked Salman and I said ‘Salman why don’t you do it?’ And he said ‘absolutely not’.
SR: I just didn’t want it to sound amateurish and I was worried that would. I said to Deepa ‘if we put it on the film and we find that it sounds amateurish then I am going to fire myself’. But I ended up not firing myself.
- There have been times when this project has nearly been made so what do you think is in the book that has prevented it being made in the past?
SR: Nothing. The problems around me are not to do with this novel but another novel and sometimes they do spill over.
One of the reasons that this has not been made before is that there was a long period after The Satanic Verses that it was probably difficult to make a film of anything that I had done and that created a wilderness of a dozen years or more.
Any problems in producing this film were linked to that problem rather than being anything to do with this book.
- Do you think that the actors did justice to the characters in the novel?
SR: Yes.
DM: Absolutely.
SR: There were moments when we were casting the film when actors would walk into the room and you really could imagine… for example Seema Biswas was the first person that we saw for Mary…
DM: Yes she was the first person.
SR: And Shabana was another first person to be offered the grandmother. Shabana is just as fierce as my grandmother - better looking but just as fierce.
- As you have said you have had to condense the novel down into a screenplay and after watching the film many people were saying ’I wish this bit had been in the movie’ and ’I wish that big had been kept in’. So do you think it would have made more sense to turn this into a mini series so more elements of the novel could have been included?
SR: Well it is too late now. The book is still there and if there are scenes that you like go and read them. I like all of the scenes in the book because I wrote it and there are things that we both wanted in the film that have been left out - some of them may make it onto the deleted scenes.
There is an extraordinary scene between Rajat Kapoor and Shabana Azmi and it is so beautifully acted between the two of them that that was a painful cut.
SB: There are many many things that have been left out but I think that ultimately the sense of the book is still there. I know the book incredibly well and you don’t step out of the film feeling that things are missing you step out of the film feeling a sense of the book.
SR: If you look at any films of long books this is an inevitable side effects - if you look at the film Anna Karenina there are a great deal of the book that is not in that film.
With The English Patient the novel is much more centred on the bomb disposal expert and the nurse and not so much on the English patient and the film makes a huge shift from one to the other. But author Michal Ondaatje was alright with that because he felt that it worked cinematically.
The book is still there, that is what I would say to the fans of the book, nothing has happened to the book.
- With respect to your individual skills as a writer and director where do you think the Indian masses in terms of accepting content - in terms of what is shown in film and TV?
SR: I don’t think the problem is the audience I think sometimes there is a problem in between the work of art and the audience. I think that Indian audiences are pretty sophisticated - more and more so - and I am hearing that they are dying to see the film.
These negative things are brought up in press conferences but I am not hearing any of that coming back from India all I am hearing is ‘when is the film coming out?’
DM: The response has been amazing. It is a very sophisticated film going audience.
- Given what you said earlier about a difficulty in getting your work adapted do you think with this film we may see more of your books being adapted?
SR: I expect the floodgates to open (laughs). Not all my books are natural movies but I have always thought that The Enchantress of Florence and Shalimar the Clown could be a movie.
I was lucky in this case to find a fellow creative artist who had a passion for the story - I always thought my book were going to happen in that way rather than a big studio coming in; these are not big studio books as they are too complicated.
Midnight’s Children is out now
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Tagged in Salman Rushdie