Promotional stills for Deepa Mehta’s upcoming adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

Adapting Midnight’s Children seemed like an impossible task, and I was doubtful that this film would actually happen until production actually started. There seemed to be far too much in the novel for an easy film adaptation, and Rushdie’s style seemed especially difficult to translate to the screen. That being said, I’m not one to get up in arms about a film’s fidelity to its source if the film can stand on its own merits. Even if much of the novel had to be cut to allow for a running time under three hours, I’ll be happy if the adaptation can both capture the spirit of the novel and find originality and innovation as a work of cinema.