Midnight’s Children is Salman Rushdie’s own adaptation of his Booker Prize-winning novel set in India during its release from British occupation. The story retrospectively narrates the life of a young boy named Saleem and his inextricable links to the birth and growth of an independent India. Saleem discovers that every baby born in the hour of independence has an unusual power and he is the linchpin of this group. Midnight’s Children weaves together stories of political struggles, personal troubles and the relevance of magic in a modern society.

In its attempts to encompass a vast range of topics and perspectives, Midnight’s Children switches its attention rapidly between different strands of storyline. This results in segues that seem coarse and abrupt, meaning the overall pace of the film feels jolted and the plot loses clarity. Occasionally allowances are made for this, and clear signposts to significant moments are given – which, rather than being helpful, seem needlessly explicit. In particular, an attempt by an impossibly vile colonial British man to transfer information of his sexual exploits through raised eyebrows and poignant silences is marked out as frustratingly pantomimic, given the uncomfortably sinister abuse of power the film is broaching.

Throughout Midnight’s Children, there is an unsettling sense of voices resonating and clashing, and although this could be a purposeful conflict to illustrate the chaos inside Saleem’s head, or indeed the pandemonium erupting through India at large, its effect is arresting. The problem emanates from the decision to convey the story of political battles on both a personal and national scale, thus giving rise to the need for constant shifts in focus. Compounding this problem is the provision of Salman Rushdie’s own narration, which is incongruously refined in tone and too literary in style to believably be the personal memoirs of the earnest Saleem depicted in the film.  

Given the film’s primary occupation with the political turbulence of the time, broaching magic as a secondary theme is ambitious. With the initial focus on something to earthly and human as national unrest, asking the audience to also accept the existence of inexplicable powers is challenging. Perhaps an earlier suggestion that a fantastical level exists within the story would help to redress the balance, as the role of the Midnight’s Children themselves otherwise seems secondary to the progress being made nationally. The introduction of magic into the film is rushed, and it remains an underexplored theme throughout.

Although the geographical and temporal scale of the film can be praised for its ambition, its enormity smothers any depth of nuance and subtlety. Frustratingly, the incidental music is at times needlessly intrusive, and is particularly noticeable at emotional high points, where the action could have better be left to speak for itself. This tendency to overlook detail and nuance pervades several aspects of the film, and thus causes moments of significance to have less impact, such as the relocation to a war zone, where the impact of change becomes lessened. The acceptability of this situation has occurred since each change in location or time up to this point has already felt sudden and unfamiliar, and so the audience has a pre-existing feeling of displacement.

Conflict is both the intentional and unintentional theme of Midnight’s Children. The film bravely aims to weave together fragments of personal and national storylines, which are held together by the incongruous unifying force of Salman Rushdie’s narration. This results in a segmented, jolting film which would have benefited from being focused into something altogether slicker and more powerful. At its best, Midnight’s Children provides moments of truly moving emotional trials, but it suffers throughout from a lack of clear direction and subtlety.