Lost in Translation
It was an impossible book to adapt. Generally, when you read a novel and get fascinated by it, you feel like how it’d be if it’s on screen even though you don’t want to get it adapted. But it is one of the few novels which felt like it’s not at all possible to adapt. It’s not a similar feeling where you think that it’s a disgrace to adapt. Here I was thinking about how impractical it’d be to adapt this novel which spans across generations and comes across hell lot of events. Obviously, an Indian film can’t be made out of this even though major part of it happens in India and it’s a story by someone of Indian origin, thanks to Censor problems. But even if otherwise, it’s a film with a lot of practical difficulties.
In spite of all the pre notions I wanted to watch the film to see at least how the film was made. I did the mistake of making it so late to watch the movie. If I had watched it immediately, may be, I’d have remembered more than what I remembered while watching the movie now.
The films first act is the one which intrigued me the most when I read it as a book. The Kashmir part between his grandfather and grandmother were such a revelation. It comes as a shocker in the book. But here it was given a comic twist, so the seriousness was lost. Post that the part where his parents marry were reasonably made. Shahana Goswami was brilliant as Amina Sinai. In fact, she looked to be the only actor who seemed to have adopted her own style properly while acting in the film. Other than her the actors who acted in the film with their own style failed to achieve what was necessary.
I don’t think the film was made with the intention to be honest with the book. The actors seemed to have been given freedom to act in a way they wanted. That kind of backfired because in the book the actors too were part of environment which Rushdie created. Here it looked like two different sets of people working on two different agenda but wanted the end product to be similar to that of both. In the way failing in both.
Once Saleem Sinai (Satya Bhabha) is born the film starts to get monotonous. After he grows into an adult it becomes so boring that the whole interest of knowing what happens next gets lost. Guess the bland face of Satya Bhabha was a reason to it. he definitely didn’t fit into the description of Saleem Sinhai in the book. Even though unheroic, the Saleem in the book had certain charm to him and the Midnights Children’s dream of the him was superb but here when it happens as if it was like just another scene. What should have been a revelation looks like a bland sequence. The same way her grandmother stopping to talk and his dreams vanishing didn’t come as a shocker. People who had not read the book wouldn’t even understand the impact it had on readers because of those antics.
This is a kind of film which requires its own world like how PTA does. Or at least go a Robert Zemeckis way like how he made ‘Forrest Gump’ but it fails to do both. Deepa Mehta type of films work when it’s a hard hitting one. May be that’s why the entire fantasy concept of the film looked so bleak and unreal and nothing worked. Also having a weak protagonist in the form of Satya Bhabha didn’t add to the spice of the film. In all it ended up to be film which was neither here nor there.
constantscribbles 