Midnight's Children

At the stroke of midnight, as India's independence lights up the sky, several children are born.

An ironic twist of fate, whereby bohemian and bourgeois babies are switched at birth, in an act of amorous solidarity, simultaneously precipitates openminded and hegemonic serializations.

One possesses the remarkable gift of being able to use his mind to create a cerebral in/corporeal clandestine commons where all of Midnight's Children can meet and discuss various subjects.

One's overwrought jealousy upholsters a ballistic desire to dominate, within.

The others, playing by a more reasonable set of hospitable synchronizations, collegially, discern.

That's a rather truncated description of what takes place in Deepa Mehta's film; it's much more complicated than that, narratively deconstructing particular parental preconceptions, touching upon complex interconnected conjugal and familial (and pre- and post-colonial) provocations, illustrating the effects of 'practical' ideological implementations on individual constituencies from jingoistically fraternal (ugh) and resurgently romantic jetties, at a frantic pace, which generally focuses on one character's brittle innocence.

The depth of potential lying within the film's itinerant confluences suggests that Salman Rushdie's novel is worth picking up, and that militaristic conflicts prevent the cultivation of prolonged endearing chill relationships.

At first, I found the film's magically real cloak to be somewhat flippant in relation to the gravity of its historical trajectory, but it's actually this light, dreamy, bewildered and baffling ambience that transcends its unavoidable puritanical devices, evoking an abstract laissez-faire conspicuous caricature.

That isn't that concerned with absolutes.

Covering a lot of interdisciplinary ground while firmly resisting attempts at classification, Midnight's Children sacrifices elaboration for stylization to divine a potential mantra.

More fitting to its humanistic features.