Haider

                                                           

       With Haider, Vishal Bharadwaj completes his trio of Shakesperean tragedies, saving the toughest for the last.

Hamlet, as we all know by now, is the longest of the bard’s plays and takes about four and half hours to be acted out in its entirety. To my mind, it is also the more complicated of his works because the theme is not woven around right and wrong or good and evil, it is about indecisiveness. And revenge of course, but no one needs to spell that out.

In Haider, Bharadwaj manages to cut it down to about two hours and forty minutes.  It is evident from the way the movie is made that Bharadwaj wanted the trilogy to end on a high note and consciously worked towards that goal. The camera and editing work are razor sharp, the locations picturesque, characters well defined, the treatment poignant, yet grand. 

The good thing about Bharadwaj’s movies is that you don’t need to know Shakespeare to appreciate and enjoy them. The very good thing about his movies is that if you do know Shakespeare, your appreciation of what Bharadwaj is doing is magnified. Of course, it helps that basic human emotions—love, jealousy, hatred, sympathy etc remain constant through time, space and geographies and the 16^th century master has already given us the best plots built around them.

Bharadwaj internalizes Shakespeare in a way that is awe inspiring. In Haider he has gotten closer to the original text of the play than he was in Maqbool and Omkara,  in a way that can excite a student of literature. Yet, he is bold enough to depart from the original script in the very end. He has the student poet, for the student prince. You can’t have a Lord Chamberlain in modern day Kashmir, so his equivalent is the head of the police department.  There are the gravediggers and there are the courtier equivalents , there is the theme of Oedipus complex touched upon, there is the moment of his skull sighting and monologue, but what definitely takes the cake is Bharadwaj’s clever twist to the Ghost and the rendition of the famous “to be or not to be” soliloquy.  What good would a Hamlet be without that?

In Haider we have “Roohdar”, who is the rooh to father Hamlet’s jism. See?  That’s what makes a good adaptation. 

Setting Haider in Kashmir was a smart touch that adds uniqueness and an extra layer of complexity but Bharadwaj could have used any backdrop for this.

Then again, a tale of a series of misunderstandings and complex human relationships  that lead to death and devastation. Where have we seen that before? 

You’re right, almost everywhere in various avatars. Which is why Kashmir works. It’s that extra something to hold your audience in place, especially those who don’t find analyzing layers of  human relationships a worthwhile investment of time and money.

And yet, at times you might get restless. It is, after all, a long movie. Good as Haider is, it lacks the “chutzpah” of Omkara.  Shraddha Kapoor rankles a bit, maybe especially  because she is in such talented company. The girl gets sandwiched between power packed performances from the rest of the cast.  There’s one song that derails momentum, but then the Bismil number works like magic. As does the breathtaking choreography in it.

But just like the sum of the parts is not always equal to the whole, for all its beauty, goosebumps and breathtaking views, Haider does not stay with you beyond the theatre walls. And you are less likely to revisit Haider as fondly as you do Omi Bhaiyya or Langda Tyagi.