#Haider : The Film

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The film, for me, is two tales in one, both set within each other.
Would each of them work without the other? Yes, they would, both powerful tales capable of standing alone in the limelight. The first, the #Hamlet story, penned by the Bard, unsurpassed, unparalleled, amazing in that it remains unconfined to the limits set by time and space. The other the contemporary saga of what was once paradise on earth, shorn of love and light by the tragedy of the strife that blights Kashmir.
Hamlet  first.

It takes the brilliance of a Vishal Bharadwaj to adapt a classic Shakespearean tragedy  in the manner that he does, for it is very intelligent film making that one witnesses. The spirit of the play finds a voice that echoes in the film, that halting, indecisive tenor, the critically humane dilemma that Hamlet suffers from, the ,’to be or not to be’, transmuted with aplomb to “hum hain bhi or nahin bhi”. The existential agony of the protagonist, disillusioned, alienated, with Life for wife and Death for mistress, a little in love with both, brilliantly transferred to celluloid.
The characters, the ones that survive from the play are all well fleshed out and beautifully portrayed. #Shahid Kapoor as Haider (Hamlet) essays his best performance yet , Indeed my mother said that he ought to win the Filmfare for this!
#Shradha kapoor as Arshia ( Orphelia) is brilliant too, ethereal to boot, she could well pass off as a charming young Kashmiri girl. I also thought that her character was exceptionally well written, the Bard’s Ophelia in comparison is something of a weekling, not quite today’s girl. she is both friend and lover, Horatio as well as Ophelia.The scene where she loses her mind after her father ( Polonius , from the play) is shot dead by Haider, sits forlorn unraveling the muffler she had knitted for  him, moving.
Haider’s father  Dr Hilal Meer( the King of Denmark, from the play) is played exceptionally well by Narendra Jha, an actor who both looks good and essays the part effortlessly. His name means the blood moon,that he loves Faiz and is given to reciting his poetry is the icing on that particular cake for me ! The character is well written as well, a doctor, humane to the core, his political stand comes into question when he brings home a militant suffering from appendicitis , putting his family in peril.
 It is this high mindedness that is the ruin of his marriage with #Tabu, playing the wife (Gertrude), that, coupled with her desire for love, attention, time, his time. She doesn't have hate in her heart for the father she says, its just that she wants more.She falls for the devious uncle, played by K K Menon, the crafty Cassius from the play. Menon’s skills consummate, his portrayal riveting. Tabu lights up the screen, backed by the script, her portrayal powerful, dominates the narrative. She has her son in an emotional bind and knows how to use it. He is in her thrall, Oedipus like.Tabu's performance, stellar. 
The story is true to Hamlet of course, the father ‘disappears, now a ‘half widow’ ,the mother marries the uncle, the son must avenge his fathers death and the mothers betrayal, a conflict ensues both within and without. There’s much pain and everybody dies. this is Cain and Abel after all and what is more elemental more primordial than that? Paradise lost,
the film is dark, macabre, morbid but true to form, Hamlet is dark.

"agar firdaus ba ruay zami ast,ami asto, ami asto , ami ast"

The other Paradise, the land in which it is set, Kashmir, is lost too, and that is another tale.

The film has drawn both accolades and brickbats on this score, its problems begin from that location , in the Kashmir of 1995, the insurgency fierce, the fires hot. The film takes the human rights perspective, those violations highlighted.
A movie can at best present a perspective as against many. So it is natural that if it is presenting the side of the common inhabitants then it might not present the other side fully. The film rarely dwells on the army. It is the police who are represented. And police are bad guys in nearly all films. The police here are the killers , often with the tacit understanding of the army. Polonius, represented here by the police headman of the district of Anantnaag,  Arshia’s father, Parvez, is a wily extractor of information, crafty arm of the coercive power of the state, the police , not the army as such. AFSPA ( The Armed Forces Special Protection Act) , however is universally hated by the civilians. Rhymed ridiculously with ‘chutzpa’ it is ridiculed often.
however, the army is not always shown in poor light, most commanders depicted are reasonable, even affable, performing a task, efficiently.To me the insidiousness of the film is its juxtaposition and selective association of information. And in that it is the complete separatists' spiel. The soliloquy at the town square, filmed at Lal Chowk in Srinagar, and the raking in of plebiscite with offering no explanations has nothing to do with development of Hamlet's character. The string of half facts presented thereafter is all to do with presenting a political agenda. That’s real ‘chutzpah' the film maker being able to say all that and walking away with it. The film is indeed seditious in that selective presentation of fact. The army is never berated overtly, the ‘disappeared'  Kashmiri Pundits are mentioned, the presentation of the separatist agenda is subtle, between the lines, intelligently done.
It is certainly a political film. #Bhardwaj has effectively rewritten an extremely inward looking play and an extremely solipsistic hero is remade into a politically aware youth who engages with the outside world as much as he battles the torments within. “hum hain ke , hain nahin” echoes with the politics of the land. for not only is love and tranquility lost within, peace and happiness is lost without, as well. Haider is sent away to study at Aligarh, a place which is free, “ Na din pe pehre hain, na raat pe taale”, implying thereby that this land is not free. Everything’s a metaphor here, Hilal is a physician, When Haider is being sent away, Hilal protests that that isn’t the cure for this “illness” (“is marz ki dawa nahin”). Hilal is a kind human who believes in restoring his “ill” hometown to health, and he doesn’t care if the patient is a civilian or a militant. And when he ends up treating a militant, it’s for appendicitis – something’s got to be removed if health is to be restored.  Ghazala, when we first meet her is seen telling children what a home is, something with “brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers…” That’s not just any home; that’s Kashmir. When Hilal is taken away by the army, his home is incinerated by rocket launchers because his militant-patient is inside, tucked away behind a secret cupboard (this scene is echoed at the end; only now, Haider is the “militant” who’s being targeted with rocket launchers) – and when Haider reaches Srinagar and asks Arshia to take him home, she tells him, “Tumhare ghar mein ghar jaisa kuch bacha nahin bacha.” The home he knew – the Kashmir he knew – doesn’t exist anymore. The Dal lake sojourns are a thing of the past. This is a Kashmir where you’d rather be thrown into jail because the alternative is worse – you could “disappear.” the metaphors roll on, one upon the other, the mind is engaged, the heart is not.

 Roohdaar, played by #Irfaan Khan, the ‘ghost’ from the play, serves to weave the two narratives together. He shares a cell with the ‘disappeared’ father, in an army camp, held prisoner for sedition. He is from the other side of the border, from Pakistan, an agent fueling the clamour for ‘Azaadi’ in the deep back lanes of the old town which lies, metaphorically and literally across the bridge on the Jhelum. He also carries the ‘avenge me’ message for Haider, as in the play, kill the uncle but leave the mother to the justice of the Heavens. Interestingly he wears white, as contrasted with the dark fatigues of the army and the police. Metaphor? In the play the ghost is a spine chilling presence, from beyond the known world, Roohdar is instead the spirit of the land, “main tha, main hoon, main hee rahoonga”. That ‘spirit’ sides with the voices of sedition, insidious that.  
This Kashmir that Bharadwaj  visits, is beautiful still, in a cold dark, hauntingly macabre manner. Blood reeks from the fallen red leaves of the Chinar ,the snows struggle to cloak the dark with white…
The silence of the frames speaks. However Hamlet is a play about words. The many many metaphors here render them unnecessary. Perhaps Bharadwaj saw this too, for there are several silent frames, frames with no words…

Having said all that, I must confess that I watched the film as if from a distance. I empathized with none of the characters, barring the father, played endearingly by Jha, the lilt of the Faiz poetry lending him a definitive sheen, as also the hope in his eyes. Haidar descends into deep dark neurosis and one knows well enough that he is lost, to no fault of his own, except the accidents of his circumstances, circumstances almost beyond his control. I watched his writhing agony unfold, understood the pain in the head, did not feel it in the heart.
Then there is the ludicrous. The two Salman  characters! (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern)  Two young men who are such great Salman Khan fans that they walk and talk and gyrate like him. Irksome to say the least. Salman fans had better give this one a miss!! They remind one of Thompson and Thomson, the two half witted blustering characters from the Tintin comic books. Unnecessary Caricatures that truly jar. As does the ridiculous punning with Chutzpah, so Bharadwaj ,and so unnecessary.
The song of the gravediggers , militants disguised as gravediggers toward the end, ludicrous too, doesn’t sit right at all. I understand the symbolism here, they are ready to lay down their mortal lives in the service of what they perceive as a greater cause, true, that idea though, manifest in a song as they dig their own graves ( double metaphor? ) is an assault on the senses. The graves produce the mandatory skull of course; Haider can now talk to it. The soliloquy stands transformed.
I must say I prefer Maqbool to this, the earlier Bharadwaj to this one. Though this is the film that has generated the greater spiel,  that had me crying for Macbeth at the end, this didn’t.
Vinny
9/10/14