Midnight's Children is historically accurate: Deepa Mehta

Highlights

• Deepa Mehta says her upcoming film Midnight's Children, which faced crticism for its negative portrayal of former prime minister Indira Gandhi, has nothing "historically inaccurate".
• The movie, based on Salman Rushdie's Booker Prize winning novel of the same name, screened at the just concluded Kerala International Film Festival where a former minister had criticised it for showing Indira Gandhi in poor light.
• "Emergency is a reality and the facts are accurate otherwise censor board wouldn't have been so generous with me. There is nothing which is not historically accurate in it. The film is not just about Mrs Gandhi but it is an aspect of what happened. I don't think she is portrayed in any other way except in a very accurate way," said Deepa Mehta in an interview.
• The director is also making changes in the map of India as the earlier version did not show Jammu and Kashmir as part of Indian territory. "I did not know about it. I wish I had. We have to show Jammu and Kashmir as our territory and I am making the changes," she said.
• It took Deepa Mehta 12 weeks to shoot the movie and more than a year to adapt it. She says she had a good time working with Mr Rushdie, who has written the screenplay of the movie.
• "Salman (Rushdie) wasn't very keen on doing it initially because he thought he has written the novel and now I should just run with it. But I felt that I needed someone to write the screenplay who could be actually not intimidated by the process of elimination. It was challenging at first but it was a great experience because Salman has a great sense of cinema and he is also very cinematic. I had a good time, which in retrospective, is bizarre," she says.
• She said the novelist will be in the country to promote the movie.
• "I am sure he will be coming, I was told that he will be here for the publicity of the movie when it opens in February. He just loves the movie."
• The film is about the journey of a boy named Saleem Sinai, who was born in the midnight of August 15, 1947 - the same date when India became independent.
• "The movie is the journey of every man who is looking for an identity. That to a degree parallels Salman's journey as well. The journey of a diasporic person, who is looking for an identity and in a way it also mirrors my journey," she said.
• Though the movie is set in India, it hasn't been shot here and Deepa Mehta said she chose to shoot outside the country because the landscape has changed drastically.
• "One of the main reason of not shooting India and specifically Bombay and Delhi was because the movie is set in 1940, 50s and 60s and when we came here looking for a location in Bombay it had changed drastically. Wherever we put the camera there were nothing but sky-rises and flyovers and the film does not need that. Also we did not have the budget to recreate those sets," she said.
• The reason for not shooting here was also to avoid controversies.
• "The reason for not shooting here was partly because we wanted to avoid problems. The book is loved in India and it wasn't banned here but if there was a possible problem why do it," she said.
• The director shot the movie in Sri Lanka, where she was forced to shut down production for three days.
• Deepa Mehta is happy that the movie has been given a clean chit by the censor board here without a single cut. "There was a real maturity in the way they approached it. They felt it is accurate, it is historical and it is a film Indians should see. They were very respectful of the source material and filmmaker. I was very impressed."
• The movie is being released in India by PVR pictures in February end.