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As directed by Deepa Mehta, it starts engagingly enough. I will give it that, willingly. It is about two boys, one poor, one rich, who are swapped moments after their birth at midnight on 15 August 1947, the very moment British rule ends. The tale is told by Saleem (the poor boy brought up as rich), who recounts his family’s history to this point, as if he could possibly know, yet I still liked the story of his big-nosed grandfather and how he courted his headstrong wife.
But, more importantly, Saleem (Satya Bhaba) is a very special boy, in possession of magical telepathic powers that enable him to connect with all the other Indian children born on the same day at around the same time. It’s something to do with his big nose that runs like a tap. He twitches it or sneezes and can thereby even summon all these other children to meetings, which means they materialise at the end of his bed via the sort of special effects last seen in Dr Who, 1963, or even Tomorrow’s People. One of these children is the other changeling, Shiva, who, as an adult, is played by Siddharth Suryanarayan, as if he’s James Dean. It is properly strange.
Saleem’s powers should, by rights, be the driving force to the film but here they are only ever incidental. I think, if I hadn’t read the book (albeit many moons ago), I’d have found it hard to figure out what the hell was happening. But, then, everything feels incidental in this. Although the novel deftly enmeshes India’s history within magical allegory, this is a bit of magic here, a bit of allegory there and, now, here’s your bit of history. Nothing is fluid, and as for the characters they never feel like proper characters, with their own inner lives, but mere puppets deployed to suit the action. True enough, it is gorgeously filmed by Ms Mehta, but maybe too gorgeously? Even the slums look like something out of Elle Decoration.
I’d like to finish by saying this is a nice try, even though it’s a failure, but, hand on heart, I just can’t, as it is too flawed, and I’m owed £60, which is no small amount, and makes me cross. Still, on a more positive note, at least I can offer this: ‘I am very proud of this review’ (Deborah Ross, The Spectator).
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