Mongrel Media Presents MIDNIGHT’SMIDNIGHT’S CHILDRENCHILDREN A Film by Deepa Mehta (148 min., Canada, 2012) www.midnightschildren.com Distribution Publicity Bonne Smith 1028 Queen Street West Star PR Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 1H6 Tel: 416-488-4436 Tel: 416-516-9775 Fax: 416-516-0651 Fax: 416-488-8438 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] www.mongrelmedia.com High res stills may be downloaded from http://www.mongrelmedia.com/press.html TABLE OF CONTENTS A Map of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh A Family Tree Short Synopsis .............................................................................................................................. 1 Long Synopsis ............................................................................................................................... 1 Midnight's Children – The Main Characters ................................................................................ 4 Interview With Director Deepa Mehta ........................................................................................... 5 “On the Making of Midnight's Children”, Salman Rushdie ...................................................... 9 Production Notes, David Hamilton .............................................................................................. 10 Green Chutney: In the Movie and in the Novel. The Recipe, Vimla Mehta ................................... 13 "The Impact of the Novel", Hari Kunzru ........................................................................................ 15 "Historical Background to Midnight's Children", Professor Deepika Bahri ........................... 16 Key Creative and Crew Bios ........................................................................................................ 18 An Introduction to the Cast, Deepa Mehta ............................................................................... 24 Actor Bios .................................................................................................................................. 24 Main Production Credits ............................................................................................................. 33 Article from The Calcutta Telegraph Malvika Singh .................................................................. 34 Article from Newslaundry.com, Madhu Trehan ........................................................................... 35 www.midnightschildren.com SHORT SYNOPSIS “Born in the hour of India’s freedom. Handcuffed to history.” Midnight’s Children is an epic film from Oscar-nominated director Deepa Mehta, based on the Booker Prize-winning novel by Salman Rushdie. At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, as India declares independence from Great Britain, two newborn babies are switched by a nurse in a Bombay hospital. Saleem Sinai, the illegitimate son of a poor woman, and Shiva, the offspring of a wealthy couple, are fated to live the destiny meant for each other. Their lives become mysteriously intertwined and are inextricably linked to India’s whirlwind journey of triumphs and disasters. From the unlikely romance of Saleem’s grandparents to the birth of his own son, Midnight’s Children is a journey at once sweeping in scope and yet intimate in tone. Hopeful, comic and magical – the film conjures images and characters as rich and unforgettable as India herself. **************************************************************************** LONG SYNOPSIS Looking back at his life, Saleem (in voice-over performed by Salman Rushdie) tells us at the beginning of the movie: “Most of what matters in our lives takes place in our absence; and my life really began on the shore of the Dal Lake in Kashmir more than 30 years before I was born.” Kashmir and Agra, India, 1917- 1946 And so we go back to a time when India was still bound to the British Empire. The romance between Saleem’s grandparents, the liberal, European-educated Dr. Aadam Aziz, and the beautiful bewitching Naseem, begins when they meet via a bedsheet with a hole in it. They marry and move to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, right in the heart of India. In Agra, Dr. Aadam Aziz finds himself surrounded by women: his formidable wife Naseem and their three daughters, wise Alia, flighty Emerald, and sweet Mumtaz, who is destined to be Saleem’s mother. By the early 1940s India is being pulled apart, careening towards the joy of Independence and the misery of Partition. The Aziz family is embroiled in the assassination of a progressive political leader Mian Abdullah who, along with his aide Nadir Khan, campaigns against the partition of the country into India and Pakistan. These larger political events catapult Nadir into hiding in the Aziz family cellar where he is cared for by Mumtaz, the second daughter in the household. A furtive marriage follows for Mumtaz and Nadir, but alas this marriage is not meant to survive. Nadir escapes the clutches of the military leaving behind a letter of divorce and now Ahmed Sinai, who has been lurking in the shadows as Alia’s erstwhile love interest, is free to follow his true desire and court the lovely Mumtaz. More weddings all round. Emerald gleefully marries Major Zulfikar. Debonair Ahmed takes his new wife Mumtaz, whom he renames Amina, to Bombay - the Indian city dearest to the author’s heart, and the birthplace of our hero, and of Indian cinema. Bombay, India, 1946-1957 Saleem tumbles into the world at midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment of India’s freedom from the British Raj. But here’s the nub of our story: Mary, a nurse in the maternity clinic, is influenced by her lover Joe’s revolutionary politics. “Let the rich be poor and the poor be rich”. In her own act of rebellion Mary switches two baby boys. Mary gives the son of a poor woman and her street performer husband Wee Willie Winkie to wealthy Ahmed and Amina. And she gives Amina’s son to Wee Willie. Amina names her son Saleem. Wee Willie names his son Shiva. Our hero Saleem grows up cheerfully, living in a Victorian villa, purchased from William Methwold, one of the last remnants of the Raj. Methwold clings to all the trappings of colonial power …and then some. Mary, the maternity nurse who is the only one who knows about the baby switch, becomes Saleem’s nanny. His “ayah”. Time and memory slide swiftly by until, at the age of ten, Saleem learns that his lineage is not as clear as he had supposed, and that his birth, coincident with that of India’s, was accompanied by strange and magical events. Something extraordinary comes into Saleem’s life: the Midnight’s Children. At first they turn up as unmanageable, static-like voices in his head, and then they come into vivid focus for him, starting with Parvati who will become Saleem’s closest telepathic confidant, and volatile Shiva, who is quickly revealed as his nemesis. The other Midnight’s Children, all born in the first hour after India’s Midnight Independence, are scattered across India and possess supernatural special powers, but not as strongly as those of Saleem, Shiva, and Parvati. The lives of these Midnight’s Children are magically linked to the fate of India. The Children’s coming of age from gifted infancy to troubled adulthood is an echo of India’s own growing pains and turmoil. The fateful secret about Saleem’s birth hangs silently over his unsuspecting family until an accident at school and surprise hospital blood tests splits his family apart. Saleem’s blood is wrong; neither his mother’s nor his father’s. This turns his father’s love into hate, and although it causes Amina much pain, Saleem is sent away. 2 Rawalpindi and Karachi, Pakistan, 1957 - 1971 Saleem is exiled to Pakistan, where his aunt Emerald has married into the military elite. Saleem grows up in the house of his uncle Zulfikar, a general in the Pakistani army, and thus Saleem becomes an eyewitness to the political events shaping Pakistan and India. In exile he learns about power and also he learns about loneliness; years with no friends, except for the Midnight’s Children. Saleem convenes secret meetings, “Conferences” of the Midnight’s Children as they try out their powers (which are considerable) and their larger purpose (uncertain). Parvati-the-Witch grows in beauty and strength. Shiva grows in ferocity. The next years are tumultuous. Saleem and his adopted homeland will endure coups, border skirmishes, and brutal civil wars. Shiva stages a coup of his own, when he tries unsuccessfully to take over the Midnight's Children Conferences. When Saleem is 17, his parents Ahmed and Amina, his sister Jamila, and Mary, the faithful ayah, are forced to move to Pakistan, and Saleem is invited to live with them once more. Mary’s burden of guilt overwhelms her, and she tells the astounded family about switching Saleem and Shiva (“not a nice boy”) at birth. And there is an additional, startling revelation about Saleem’s real father. But this time Amina fights for Saleem, and he stays, although shaken, because finally he knows who he is and, more alarmingly, who Shiva is. Shiva is the most dangerous of the Midnight’s Children and Saleem has stolen his life. Saleem was once the darling of his family, but those days are long gone. Now it’s his sister Jamila, a famous singer, who soaks up the spotlight. The India-Pakistan War ramps up, with catastrophic results for his whole family and for Pakistan and India. During an air-raid Saleem is brained by falling debris and, like a bewitched or jinxed character in a fairytale, Saleem slides into years of unconsciousness, which do not lift