ByTowne ByTowne Cinema
ByTowne Cinema
325 Rideau St. Ottawa K1N 5Y4
Info Line: (613) 789-FILM
Midnight's Children
Print this pageBorn in the hour of India's freedom. Handcuffed to history.
A momentous collaboration between Oscar-nominated director Deepa Mehta, one of Canada’s most gifted and fearless filmmakers, and Salman Rushdie, one of the world’s most imaginative, controversial novelists, Midnight’s Children marks a milestone in international cinema. It is also a luxurious feast of a film, bursting with colour, wit, and magic.
Rushdie’s inspired adaptation of his own Booker Prize-winning magical realist novel (he also narrates the film) follows the destinies of a pair of children born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment that India claimed its independence from Great Britain – a coincidence of profound consequence for both. ‘Handcuffed to history,’ and switched at birth by a nurse in a Bombay hospital, Saleem Sinai (Satya Bhabha), the son of a poor single mother, and Shiva (Siddharth), scion of a wealthy family, are condemned to live out the fate intended for the other. Imbued with mysterious telepathic powers, their lives become strangely intertwined and inextricably linked to their country’s careening journey through the tumultuous twentieth century.
An irreverent epic of Shakespearean proportions, shot through with moments of arresting intimacy, Midnight’s Children is a production of truly impressive scope. Featuring sixty-two locations, state-of-the-art computer graphics, impressive production design by the director’s brother Dilip Mehta, and an enormous cast and crew, it was filmed under a cloak of secrecy in Sri Lanka, which turned out to be the best possible place to recreate the India of the past century. Brimming with romance, spectacle and intrigue, sly social commentary and uplifting optimism, Midnight’s Children is as vast and beguiling as the great country to which it pays homage.
– Toronto International Film Festival
This web site is very useful, but the hard copy of the ByTowne guide still has its merits. People rely on it and love it. Plus, its calendar pages can be pulled out and posted on your fridge door, something that we still can't achieve with the web site. Get your copy today at many local stores, coffee shops and info centres around town! 