OF LOVE, LIFE AND POLITICS: VISMAL BMARDWAJ'S MASTERSTROKE

Haider

the political, cultural and emotional complex ities oftheir characters

STARR

IN

G: Tabu, Shahid Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor, Kay Kay Menon, Narendra Jha

WR ITER-DIRECTOR: Vishal Bhardwaj ~ ~){

Shakespeare lives! Sure, the narrative is fractured and fatally flawed at times, but like the hero's villainous uncle, who lies limbless writhing in pain in the Kashmiri snow pleading for death at the end, the narrative dares you to end the pain of a people who wear their brutal existence on their sleeves.

Haider is a beast that just won't be tamed by regular cinematic definitions There is flamboyance and subtlety, both at once, in the treatment. Elegance and earthiness rub shoulders in the execution of what is regarded as one of Shakespeare's most complex tragedies

And to place Hamlet in militant Kashmir what a masterstroke! Haider is the kind of cinema that unfurls wave after wave of exquisite narrative fuel into the frames, providing compelling narration that is propelled as much by the passionate writing as the intuitive direction.

Bhardwaj understands his Shakespeare inside out. He transmutes "Hamlet"into "Haider"with an unbridled fearlessness, tempered by a restraint of treatment that goes a long way in imparting an urgent sense of beauty to the work.

That Tabu and Shahi d play the mother and son torn by the agonising disappearance of the man they both love (Narendra Jha, a surprisingly well cast actor in a role that is more about absence than presence) is a blessing for Bhardwaj's Shakespeare I don't think any other actors could have better understood

Tabu and Shahid get a firm grip on their characters and pitch their emotional compulsions into Kashmir's tormenting tale of terrorism during times of oedipal impulses

The narrative - so supple and strong it defers any dispute regarding its raison d'etre - opens on a fateful chilling night in Srinagar when a doctor accused of harbouring terrorists disappears. His wife shares a discernibly sexual relationship with her brother-in- law (Kay Kay Menon) And the son, who was forced to leave Kashmir by his militancy- parano id mother, returns as an educated young man to see his mother's illicit relationship with his uncle (Kay Kay Menon).

At times Bhardwaj's vis i on turns playfully towards Shakespeare's plays. There is the comic rel ief in the form of two Salman Khan l ook-alikes runn ing a video parlour in Bhardwaj's Kashmir in 1995. Salman's films run playfully through the film like a prankish leitmotif, doing nothing to the main character's painlashed lives Towards the end three gravediggers straight out of Shakespeare, sing and dance in and around the graves.

Cinematographer Pankaj Kumar, who earl ier filmed the amazing Ship Of Theseus, penetrates and probes the brutal tragedy of Kashmi r Once there, the visuals insinuate a profound affinity between nature and man's cruelty Who knows what goes on in the minds of politicians, poets and other nation builders?

Haider l ooks at a grieving son's search for his m i ssing father w ith languorous affection. There are bouts of tenderness and brutality in the narrative which sometimes overlap without warning

Above all, there are the performances, towering actors craning their collective creative necks into the director's vision to give it magical spin Wh il e the supporting cast including Jha, Lalit Parimoo, Aamir Bashir and a host of actors i IIuminate the edges of this darkl y ignited revenge saga, it is the th ree principal actors who pin Bhardwaj's Shakespearean d r ama down to a level of cinematic lyricism.

Kay Kay as Haider 's t reacherous uncle is so wickedly subtle and evil yet humane that you wonder where this brilliant actor got wayla id in his journey in cinema.

As for Shahid's torn, troubled, tormented Haider, the actor brings out all the inner conflicts in a shimmering rush of Shakespearean angst. Wit h this one performance, Shahid proves himself notches ab ove all his contemporaries

But it's Tabu whose haunted face as t h e bereaved wife and the troubled mother that will stay with me To the role of the mysterious dramatic deceptive woman, Tabu brings a kind of inner il lumination that lights up the darkest corners of her character's soul. Her scenes with her screen-son Shahid are smothered in unspoken words and recrimination lrrfan, who has a capricious cameo, als o gets the fi lm's only funny line

Bhardwaj shoots one lengthy dialogue between the two in one single shot and why not when you have two actors who seem to have visited the soul of the Shakespearean p l ay and transported it to the pa in of Kashmir?

As Haider's love interest Shraddha Kapoor struggles to create space fo r herself in the mother-son saga. She has her brilliant moments towards the end where we see her humming a Kashmiri folk tune in numbed grief oblivious to the world that gave her that grief.

But this is not a film about laughter and humour. Haider looks at the grim reality of t he Val ley thro ugh a Shakespearean prism. Shahid's Haider i s one of Hindi cinema's most tragic heroes ever He bleeds into the narrative's heart without allowing a drop of blood to stain the surface

Bhardwaj's third Shakespearean sojourn is his best yet Haider is like a painting viewed from the road inside an art gallery The v ision is distant yet vivid, l ayered l ife-l i ke and yet exquisitel y poetic. By the time Rekha Bhardwaj comes on to sing an evocative song at the end about all the lo ss of the Kashmiris, I cou ldn't move from my seat.

And yes, Bhardwaj's background score rises and falls in swelling tides of b lood-soaked undulations. Besides Haml et/Haider, the other truly tragic hero in this cinematic marvel is Kashmir

Set in a fatally flawed paradise Haider screams sil ently to be recognised as a wondrous work of art.

To see or not to see? That i sn't a question at al l. Rush to the movies and forget all t h e slam- bang-bang stuff that is beckoning in glamorous postures The glamour of Haider l ies in fold after fold of poetic statement on love, life and politics. You simply can 't help bei ng seduced i nto attentive submission.

SUBHASH K JHA

Bottleshop Business For Sale

Bang Bang

STARRI NG: Hrithik Roshan, Katrina Kaif

D IRECTOR: Siddharth Anand

*--k'-x-x-~

There are many beautiful locations in this ummm bang binge. Prague, Greece, London, Shimla, Dehra Dun and Pizza Hut.

Yup, one major action sequence featuring Hrithik and Katrina, the Golden Couple on the run, is set in a pizza shop. In fact, this particular chain seems to be very good at delivering their goods, considering Danny Denzongpa, playing an international kingpin, is seen nibbling at the same pizza brand at the start of the film.

Appetizer, anyone?

Wish we could see the same zeal for delivering the goods in the direction of the film. In one word, Bang Bang is pointless. Katrina Kaif plays the k in d of vexatious dreamer who would allow a renowned criminal to convince her that she should abandon her boring life for some supposedly cool hi-adventure. And hi-adventure i n Bang Bang means somersaulting cars, vertiginous jumps from heights and Hrithik trying to pass off water sports as stunts performed to save the world from catastrophe.

None of this is as exciting for us to watch as it is for Katrina to do though. She is having fun the way other boring girls in our films do when they meet the unpredictable adventurous hero.

Check out Deepika Padukone in Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani. The difference between Deepika's and Kaif's awakening