Haider: A film on critical analysis of Hamlet

Intrigued by the first look and the trailers, I couldn’t wait for Haider to release. On the day of its release which was Gandhi Jayanti, I went to watch the film alone, as all my friends were busy with something or the other. And I definitely wasn’t disappointed to take all this pain–It was worth it. Seldom do you have movies like these, which break the clutter of brainless, laden with non-sense masala, films (isn’t always audience’s demand).  

Haider according to me isn’t the best adaptation of Hamlet, rather it is much more than just that. There have been mixed reviews of the film, but for me, it is nine on ten-hands down. Vishal Bhardwaj like in all his previous adaptations carefully chooses the backdrop, as the underworld in Maqbool, Bihari gangs in Omkara and Kashmir during the insurgency in Haider. 

Politics of the place and power positions play a catalyst in how each of the characters behaves in the film. Hence, making it easier for the viewer to understand why is a character behaving in a certain way. For example, you understand Ghazala’s insecurity comes from Hilal Meer’s being a Good Samaritan towards militants. Who knows he was actually one of the militants fighting for the so-called azaadi! As he, unlike Ghazala, is neither shocked when a gun is found in Haider’s bag nor is he keen on sending him away. This is later evident in Haider’s monologue when he talks about azaadi and in his love/admiration for his father more than his mother. 

 Bhardwaj has very smartly chosen the colours for the film, to depict the psyche of the characters. He like a painter mixes black mountains and white snow to bring out the grey effect throughout. This film is an amalgamation of several literary works. I felt it was made by a literary critic instead of a filmmaker, hence not a literal adaptation. The script felt like an analysis of Hamlet and many scenes like the enactment of the analysis. Like I felt that Shahid’s epitomic monologue was a lot inspired by Manto’s Toba Tek Singh—his lunacy, more so because of the Kashmir (India–Pakistan) backdrop was more like Toba Tek Singh’s than Hamlet’s.

His chutzpah was like Singh’s oper-de-rumble-dumble. This reading is further strengthened when Haider says, “Jiska law hai, uska order. India-Pakistan ne milkar khela humse border-border. Ab na hume chodde Hindustan, aur na hume chhode Pakistan.” This depiction of lying on the border is very strongly felt here. Kashmir and border is personified as Haider, it’s more about Kashmir’s identity crisis than Haider’s existential crisis.  ‘Hum hai ke hum nahi’ was very blandly translated—it couldn’t achieve the existential crisis too well, but don’t think that was the idea also. It was consciously more about Kashmir than Haider’s head at that moment.

Imageries play a great role in Bhardwaj’s films. The use of a red muffler in this one is very interesting. It symbolizes many things. Woven for her father by Arshia, it is the only colour in the grey valley-symbolizing love. 

A love that holds her father from hurting Haider—a love that binds Haider from resorting to killing for the purpose of achieving inteqaam for his father. The scene where Haider successfully kills a person for the first time (the two jesters/ Salmans), Bhardwaj cleverly emphasizes on untying of the muffler.  It can be paralleled to the red handkerchief in Othello when Pervez/Polonius finds out about the whereabouts of Haider by tracing the muffler. After Haider kills Parvez (Arshia’s father), this muffler becomes a symbol of heart-ache, of broken heartedness. Arshia gets engulfed by this pain so much that the same love becomes venom and every thread of wool-a snake. She unwinds the very muffler and spreads all the threads of wool over her body like the asps Cleopatra have over her when she commits suicide in Antony and Cleopatra.

I found the grave diggers singing, ‘aao na…’ very funny but guess that is exactly what the film-maker wanted to depict—the humour behind nothingness. The hawk cap Shahid wore during Ghazala’s second wedding, lent a theatrical value to those scenes—which was pleasing to the eyes. Also, it is interesting how the camera zooms on a book by PD James kept on the shelf when Ghazala is telling Khurram about militants staying at her house. It hints that a crime is about to hatch.

Haider’s digging out a skull from the grave didn’t go down well with me. It seemed useless to do that towards the end. It wasn’t his father’s grave either. Can anyone help me know what did it symbolise, if anything at all?

Shahid has acted well in the scenes which had some melodrama. Like the monologue and in songs like bismil, etc. Otherwise, I felt he carried a straight face throughout the movie. He could do better in portraying the confusion in the initial scenes of the film. Instead, he looked like a guy who has had a terrible break-up, exactly how he looked in Jab we Met.

The love song in the middle of an intense story felt out of place. I doubt a guy going through such depressing times in his life, wants to dance around the trees suddenly. It is irksome for the viewer. We want the story to proceed. 

Tabu is marvelous, every expression is so nuanced. I couldn’t let my eyes off her. The nuance with which she played a  woman who is desired by her husband, brother-in-law, and her son, was phenomenal. What a smart depiction of Oedipus complex and that underlying incestuous desire- “tu jab chhota tha na toh mere aur apney abbaji ke beech mein aakar sojata tha aur kehta tha Moji mein bada ho kar aapsey nikah karoonga.”  Sniffing of the itr, that incomplete kiss, it does exactly what it has to, while saving the film from a ban. 

(You have to keep those things in mind in this country.)

Though everyone has got the Kashmiri accent more or less right, but Tabu is fabulous. I love the way she says, “Doctrr saaab.” K.K. Menon is found struggling with the accent and over-acting in a few scenes. 

Irrfan Khan did well with his short role. He could have been better used though.

I loved the way Bhardwaj turned his witches into policemen in Maqbool. Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah were exceptional as the witches making prophecies. A dialogue that you always remember from Maqbool is a shared one by the witches-“Aag ko paani ka darr hamesha baney rehna chahiye.” 

Unfortunately, the ghost in Haider fails in making a similar impact on the audiences’ mind. Roohdaar (Irrfan) is launched in a grand way into the film, just before the interval, but has been made to do close to nothing. The jail story is very tedious and makes you feel, “don’t know where but I’ve seen a similar scene before.” The resonating dialogue, “Haider mera inteqaam lena...” is still better. But the ghost wasn’t impressive enough, alas! Nor does the film emphatically shows, that the real ghost is in Haider’s mind. 

The climax won my heart. Despite that, I feel that it sort of sidelines the realism which was tried to follow throughout the film by glorifying Tabu as the sacrificing heroine. It at the same time breaks the norms of conventional realism in films and introduces something new—dramatic realism. I know they are oxymoron but it seemed realistic that a woman/mother who even Haider thinks is completely self–centered, at the end turns out to be true about all those warnings about killing herself - which Haider thought were shallow. Her love for her son, which seems fake at one point, is real. Her suicide only strengthens Hilal Meer’s ulterior purpose in not wanting to send his son to Aligarh and giving refuge to militants in his house.

Just that I found the superimposed theme of, revenge begets revenge a little too clichéd and idealistic. I mean this wasn’t at all in Hamlet, at least not in the simple reading. I chide myself for comparing it again, back to square one huh! And I begin to explain Haider’s actions. So Bhardwaj’s Hamlet is smarter, who when his Moji commits suicide, realizes that his azaadi is not in inteqaam. It is in knowing himself; hence he does not kill Khurram. The end makes sense because the backdrop is Kashmir – would have been a little preachy otherwise. Nevertheless, it was a well-thought-out film. I think one of the best ones this year.