An Jo on Haider

MILD SPOILERS

HAIDER is a pretty faithful adaptation of the bard’s HAMLET with a deviation from the play only toward the climax [unexpected but gruesome for sure]. Even in being text-book faithful, this is a very strong work by Bharadwaj when it comes to transposing the tragedy of Elsinor castle onto the grief-laden snowcaps of Srinagar. It is particularly arresting and haunting when it cuts through the emotional cysts of Prince Hamlet, Claudius, and Gertrude.

Bharadwaj starts the film with Dr. Hilal, father to Shahid Kapoor’s Hamlet and husband to Tabu’s Gertrude, getting shunned off to an Indian army detention center for having sheltered and treated a militant. Haider is then introduced to us searching for his father anywhere, and everywhere. VB captures the haziness of Haider’s mind when he sees his uncle and mother enjoying a musical session. He sees her through a curtain and all the time, his gaze is fixed on her, and never on the uncle. It is almost as though the translucent curtain represents the ‘confusion’ in his mind about what his mother is; guilty? Not guilty? An accomplice? And then she sees him and comes close to him drawing the curtain away; aiding in clearing his fogginess. He then, with a strong sense of certainty, accuses them of being in an affair and making the most of the disappearance of his father: He replies to his bewildered uncle’s question with – ‘I am talking about what I am exactly seeing.’ There are many cinematic pearls like these strewn across this movie. Like the initial talk between Tabu and her husband about ‘flames’ within and outside of her body and soul. Or the emotional exchange between them while taking a walk amongst fall colors .Infact, all the scenes that have Tabu and Shahid conversing are superbly built and succeed in belting out great emotional wallops. The scenes between the two are superbly written and acted, conveying the right amount of sexual undercurrent as also the emotional distance widening between them.

King Hamlet’s ghost is very cleverly represented by Irrfan Khan’s Roohdar – and appropriately named [Rooh: soul] so. As a ‘ghost identity’, an ISI agent, he shares information about the father’s death and the conspirator with the son. This sends Hamlet over the edge and he takes to arms and plans revenge on his uncle. The song BISMIL BISMIL is a brilliant stand-in for the traveling actors’ play in Hamlet. The song is outstandingly shot and should be in memory for a long, long time as did that other Kashmiri song, BHUMBRO from Mission Kashmir. Irrfan Khan, by the way, gets one of the best entry scenes ever in Hindi films of recent memory, one that is usually reserved for ‘stars.’ And just right before the interval, akin to Jackie Shroff’s entry in that forgettable film, 1942 A love story.

VB provides fine black humor by representing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as Salman and Salman, two fanatics of the actor Salman Khan. This is almost like a nod to Thompson & Thompson from Tintin and the two actors portraying them are a riot. The Oedipal complex is briefly but cleverly hinted at with Haider kissing his mother on the neck or she reminding him that he promised to marry her when he grew up! To be or not to be conundrum is smartly woven into the narrative – even comically with Salman and Salman.

The writing is superior and stays with you; the words, exquisite. The conversation between Dr. Hilal and Roohdar in the detention center is such a terrific tribute to the inventiveness of Shakespeare when it comes to metaphorical gems. “Mein lafaani bhi hoon, faani bhi hoon; shia bhi hoon, sunni bhi, maulvi bhi hoon, pandit bhi,” claims Roohdar. “Aapko duniya se baatne ka mann nahin karta,” says Haider to his mother. Just when you thought that was a compliment, he ends it with “Aap bahut khoobsorat zeher ho.”

VB’s visual intelligence is breath-taking here. I talked of Haider seeing his mother in the film for the first time through a curtain. In a later scene, Haider’s uncle Khurram [Kay Kay Menon] sits beside Tabu grinning after having won an election. She is shown smiling, a tad happy, and she is wearing glares. You or I would never know what’s going on in her mind, since don’t see her eyes. It is only her smile. So is she guilty? Genuine? How can she sit and smile like that when she calls herself a half-widow? And the screen blacks out to transition onto the next scene. The grave-diggers’ song picturization is fantastic to say the least. Or the scene where Haider shows his mother in a broken mirror her two faces. The relationship between Tabu and Khurram is shown progressively. Haider first sees them having fun and bonding over music. The next scene showing their relationship has Tabu waking up from a dream, only to casually reveal Khurram sleeping beside her. And the ghost equivalent Roohdar enters in a way complimentary to his title of ghost-identity, hazy and blurred and clear only after he wipes his glares.

The photography is breathtakingly beautiful and haunting. The striking contrast between the violence and beauty of the valley is well captured. The music is not to the level of Bharadwaj’s other films. There is a kind of ‘sameness’ that creeps in but lyrics by Gulzar and Faiz Ahmed are memorable. ‘AAP KE NAAM’ and ‘GULON KE RANG’ are the stand-outs. The background music is highly successful in aiding and accentuating the situations and emotional arcs of the characters. It aptly conveys the ambiance of impending doom.

Shahid Kapoor has done a fine job of conveying the emotional muddle of going through the process of avenging his father’s death. He is superb in the town-square scene where almost Chaplin-like, he talks of life in the valley under militancy and army. It’s indeed a fine casting choice. Kay Kay Menon is good but one gets the feeling he is trying too hard to act ‘different’. [Watch the scene where he explains to Haider who his father’s killer is and how he plans to catch him]. Irrfan Khan is rightly subdued and distant. Shraddha Kapoor as Ophelia doesn’t leave much of an impact. But I didn’t understand the logic of her playing an English language news-reporter who pronounces loved as lovvveed and used and ussad. In fact, there is liberal usage of deliberate mis-pronunciation: False becomes faales; acts become actus; school becomes sakool. Not sure whether this is the style in the valley or this is something done for effect here. The one that haunts you even after you leave the cinema-hall is Tabu’s Gazala. God knows how she does it but she conveys those myriad moods right into your heart. That face and body-language cover seduction, loneliness, confusion, angst, guilt with such aplomb that one is left stunned.

Finally, when all is so good, the one part that rattled me is VB’s using J&K’s insurgency problem vis- a-vis the Indian Army as the back-ground. It is clearly a one-sided view. [Through the film, the Indian Army is painted viciously black and then, almost as a token, a line is inserted in end-credits saying the Indian army helped during the floods and we salute them! This sounds quite cynical.] It is almost as if you are watching a poetic version of INSHAALLAH FOOTBALL. Now VB strikes as a film-maker who is more tilted toward the humanistic angle in any society and its conflicts; the human cost of war so to speak. This transmutation to the Kashmir issue is fine. But what is out-of-sorts is the insistence on ‘specifics’ which incidentally dulls the message that the greatest victim of any strife is the human. Characters – mainly Haider’s—keep pulling out all sorts of laws, bylaws, sections, rules, and acts of UN, Geneva Convention, and Indian constitution in conversations. Nehru and plebiscite are quoted too! But when it comes to the other side, everything is shoved under the umbrella of ‘sarhad paar training ke liye bhejo’. When one focuses on such ‘specifics’, and then one shows only one side of any conflict, there is a problem. You cannot then suddenly change gears to philosophical understandings of the stateless human as a victim of war. Since the ‘human’ is the same across both sides, how do the ‘specifics’ of one side matter more? This is where Mani Ratnam succeeded in DIL SE. The politics always takes a back-seat, is almost vague. What is underlined is the toll on people, on the resultant emotional upheaval.

I am not sure how this film is going to fare with the public. This is a heavy film and it almost demands you to see and feel more than the sum total of what is shown. However, that this will go on to be a collector’s pride is hardly a doubt.