FILMING IN SRI LANKA: Gopi Garmaratnam, Errol Kelly, Deepa Mehta, Ravindra Randeniya & Ainsley de Silva of the “Film team”.
Midnight’s Children, a collaboration between Academy Award-nominated director Deepa Mehta, one of the most acclaimed, gifted and fearless filmmakers in Canada, and Salman Rushdie, one of the world famous controversial novelists, had its world premier gala presentation at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this year.
Rushdie adapted his Booker Prize-winning 300-page novel into the screenplay. The novel portrays the destinies of two children born in the midnight on August 15, 1947, when India gained independence from Great Britain. A nurse (Seema Biswas) in a Bombay hospital switched the newborns, Saleem Sinai (Sathya Bhabha), the son of a poor single father whose mother died after childbirth and Shiva (Siddhartha), a child born to a wealthy Bombay family.
Seema Biswas, is a very talented actress and knows well how to express her thoughts. “Let the poor be rich and rich will be poor” were the last words of her friend, Joe. After talking to her she saw his body on a hospital bed.
Actress Shriya Saran arrives at Roy Thompson hall for the premiere of Midnight’s Children. Picture by Mahesh Abeyewardene
The father of the wealthy family became furious when he came to know that was not his own son. He assaulted the teenager and just wanted to chase him out of his house. Though the child was not her own, his wife brings him up with mother’s love. Anyway, the destiny of Saleem Sinai was not favourable to him at all. Shiva growing up in the slums always hated the sight of Saleem since childhood.
When everything went wrong in the wealthy family, the nurse who was responsible for the devastation wanted to come up with the real story. It was just too late to correct the major error that she committed. Sri Lanka had 651 locations in Midnight’s Children including colonial type buildings, leading schools, churches and other landscapes. “I loved working in Sri Lanka because we filmed Water (nominated for Oscar in 2007) in the island. The skyline hasn’t changed much in Sri Lanka; not too many skyscrapers and flyovers, however construction is happening very fast now, we got there just at the right time,” she told The Sri Lanka Reporter after the premiere in Toronto. “The old Galle Face and colonial houses were just fabulous. I loved working in Sri Lanka.” She paid tribute to Sri Lankan art director Errol Kelly and Gopi Dharmaratnam who handled executive supervision in the production company “The Film Team” headed by Ravindra Randeniya. “The crew in Sri Lanka was just amazing and talented people and the main crew members were unable to attend the Toronto premier due to work commitments in Colombo,” she said. Sri Lanka is like a second home for her and said her favourite dish was hoppers (appa) served with shrimp curry.
