I would be rightly regarded as a Philistine to criticise a book that has won the Booker Prize. However this is a film, not a book, and so it has to play by different rules.
To start with the positives, it is brilliantly filmed and acted. It was an interesting family narrative, until Saleem started hearing voices. Even then there is a good film in there showing Indian/Pakistani attitudes and history. It might even have worked without the fantasy elements, though it would have to change its title.
I recognise that the fantasy elements are supposed to show that the ideals that were born at midnight before Independence Day were personified by Saleem and the other children. Their experiences show how the the ideals were destroyed. Even so, it didn't work for me, who prefers a narrative to be told straightforwardly.
This isn't just a lack of imagination on my part; it is because a film can't contain as much as a book, and this limitation negates the book's allegorical ambitions. There is less time to show why the children exist and what they experience. Consequently the allegory becomes peripheral, even an annoyance, when there is so much reality to include.
Finally, I may be dim and/or too literal, but I can't see how the family nose was passed on to Saleem from his grandfather, when he was the son of Vanita and Methwold. Is that part of the fantasy?
To start with the positives, it is brilliantly filmed and acted. It was an interesting family narrative, until Saleem started hearing voices. Even then there is a good film in there showing Indian/Pakistani attitudes and history. It might even have worked without the fantasy elements, though it would have to change its title.
I recognise that the fantasy elements are supposed to show that the ideals that were born at midnight before Independence Day were personified by Saleem and the other children. Their experiences show how the the ideals were destroyed. Even so, it didn't work for me, who prefers a narrative to be told straightforwardly.
This isn't just a lack of imagination on my part; it is because a film can't contain as much as a book, and this limitation negates the book's allegorical ambitions. There is less time to show why the children exist and what they experience. Consequently the allegory becomes peripheral, even an annoyance, when there is so much reality to include.
Finally, I may be dim and/or too literal, but I can't see how the family nose was passed on to Saleem from his grandfather, when he was the son of Vanita and Methwold. Is that part of the fantasy?