Film Review: Postcolonial Films: Midnight's Children, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, The Black Prince and Abdul & Victoria

 

Midnight Children

Midnight Children and Booker Prize, Midnight Children, 1981

 

Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children, depicts the state of India through the voice and family of Salim Sinai, a child born at the time of India's independence. He and his 1001 other children, born near the midnight stroke with special powers, support his vital birth. Salim believes that his birth is determined by Prime Minister Nehru's letter that he decides that his destiny is tied to the nation.

 

Written in a humorous, humorous voice by Salim, Rushdie imagines the recent political and social history of India. Using his family and his friends as samples of various groups in India’s political, business and military scenes, Salim depicts the history of the military coup in Pakistan, the war between Pakistan and India and the Indira Gandhi crisis.

 

Midnight's Children won the Booker Prize in 1981, the Booker BF Bookers in 1993, and the Best the Booker in 2008. It has adapted to the stage, and attempts to adapt it to television have failed. Rushdie worked with filmmaker Deepa Mehta to turn the novel into a film.

Themes in Rushdie's writing

Although many themes in Rushdie's writing weave themselves through his composition, history has always played an integral role in establishing the structure of his stories. According to Rushdie: "By changing the point of view of literature, by demystifying, by always looking at what is needed, evaluating history, what would we have seen if the judges of power had not worked so hard to divert our attention." History provides Rushdie with the background to develop a ministry that explores the complexities of identity, migration, politics, and love.

Miscegenation:  As per the definition of Merriam Webster dictionary, Miscegenation means a mixture of races; especially: marriage, cohabitation, or sexual intercourse between a white person and a member of another race. In the movie, we can find the sexual relation between White colonizer Methwold with black skin Indian Poor lady and another sexual relationship with white Saleem with black-skinned Parvati. So, in this way postcolonialist studies the mixture of identity and culture.

 

The Reluctant Fundamentalist 

   It is a 2012 political thriller drama film based on the 2007 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist byMohsin Hamid, directed by Mira Nair, starring Riz Ahmed and Kate Hudson in lead.^[4] The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a post-9/11film, movie about the impact on one man of the Al Qaida attacks and the American reaction to them. ( Wikipedia)

    The story starts with an interview. The American CIA agent Bobby Lincoln gives an interview for the abduction of an American Professor in Lahore. Bob was Taking interview of Changez Khan in the Coffee cafe in Lahore that he may be involved in this abduction or in the matter of 9/11. Here Mira Nair interestingly used the flashback technique which was to move us from Pakistan to America in an eye-opening way. The title of the movie gives us two different views one is that fundamentalist in terrorism and another business fundamentalist.

The film starts with an interview of Changez Khan By Bobby in which Changez Khan narrates his story about his life in America. The hero of the novel was very young, intellectual, businessman, and highly reputed. There he was living a good life with his beloved Erica, a very good artist in photography. But suddenly all the things changed with Changez after the attack on the WTC tower. All people look towards him like he is a terrorist, he insulted by the FBI and many American fellows and abused him. Once, he loved America like his native land but after abusing and insulted her sincerity he came back to Pakistan and starts delivering lectures in University. 
      But this American agent blames him that you are teaching terrorism in university, which was not the truth. He lost his innocent fellow by the fire of an American Agent then CIA agents realized that they have done mistakes and killed an innocent man. But at the end of the movie, Changez wants freedom from Mujahid and America's business culture and he wants to live a meaningful and simple life with the happiness of the family. 
      In this movie we find very good use of narrative technique like flashback technique to make the movie very interesting, and also used very good camera focus when we see the scene of the attack on WTC tower when the camera on the face of Changez rather on the live telecast, to know the expression of Changez towards it. Also, very good meaningful background kinds of music are there to convey the nonverbal ideas.  So in a nutshell we can say that movie has a tremendous effect on the audience. Because what people were not able to see that this movie has tried to represent. 

        While trying to see the Postcolonial elements in the movie we came to know that how western countries see Muslims and especially Pakistani. Mostly Americans' view of them is much problematic. But no one can raise the question against the power. And that same thing we can see in this movie. 

The Black Prince and Abdul & Victoria

The relationship between Queen Victoria and her generous, young Indian attendant, Abdul Karim, was so controversial and reprehensible by her family members that, after the king's death, in 1901, she cut off her existence from imperial history. According to The Telegraph, Victoria's son Edward immediately demanded that any letters between the two found on the royal premises be burned. The family had Karim removed from the house by the queen, and he was returned to India. Beatrice, Victoria's daughter, erased all references to Karima in the Queen's Journal - this is a diligent effort to discredit the more than a decade-long relationship with Karima, whom she considered a close confidante. Karim's annihilation by the royal family was so accurate that a full 100 years could have passed before the eagle-eyed journalist's bizarre key was spotted at Victoria's summer home - and the resulting investigation led to the discovery of Victoria's relationship with Karim.

Postcolonial view:

           If we watch this movie from the perspective of postcolonial study, we have to apply ‘Orientalism’ as well as race theory, Edward said. We can ask why Western countries and especially America look at Muslim countries as countries of terrorism. It's about America's illusion that every Muslim is a terrorist. America knows that if we are in a position of power we will have to destroy all Muslim countries in the name of terrorism. One may have a question as to why Muslim countries are outnumbered by others, then why they are not taking action on America. But, in fact, due to the harassment of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, countries unable to convince all Muslims that they are not.Change also faced trouble in the movie because he belongs to a Muslim country. All countries and their movies show that the villain is almost a Muslim. They succeeded in creating this kind of stereotype in the minds of people of other religions. America alone has killed 3000 of its Americans in this attack, but they do not see that they have killed billions of Muslims in the Gulf War and Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria wars. If the world is to make peace on earth, everyone must oppose America to stop terrorism because "America is the mother of terrorism."