Salman Rushdie is controversy’s favourite child. Anything related to him or his renowned novels is most likely to draw criticism especially in India. Perhaps this is the reason that not a single distributor bought the rights of Deepa Mehta’s film based on Rushdie’s award -winning book Midnight’s Children.
Courtesy: Ibn live
While the film Midnight’s Children premiered in Totonto Film Festival and received a luke warm response, Deepa Mehta still managed to attract distributors from 40 different countries but from India.
It is indeed strange that a film about India based on a book written by an author who has an Indian origin does not get a single distributor in India.
Mehta told Hindustan Times that “Salman (Rushdie) has often said that the book was his love letter to India. I think the film reflects that love. What a pity if insecure politicians deprive the people of India to make up their own minds about what the film means, or does not mean, to them.”
Deepa Mehta’s much awaited Midnight’s Children lushly captures much of India’s recent history in an epic sweep, some of the magical realism of Salman Rushdie’s iconic novel after which it is named, and is even funny.
The film, much like the book elucidates the forceful enforcement of Emergency during Indira Gandhi’s rule. Midnight’s Children is about a two children born at the same time that India was born, August 14, 1947, and so are “handcuffed to history”.
The film is scheduled for a late October release.
with inputs from Agencies
