Haider (2014)
Haider Vishal Bharadwaj’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s titular play ‘Hamlet’ is dark, gritty and thoroughly meticulous in craft. There is always a beauty about snow white backdrop that provides the canvas to draw human fallacies in red. ‘Haider’, set in the backdrop of Kashmir proves to be violently beautiful. But it’s not the violence, or the prominent vengeance of ‘Hamlet’; nor the socio-political dogma that creating a ripple of controversy was faced by the people during the 95 Kashmir Conflicts, that was the driving force of Haider. It was the awry and eerie love and relationship between the mother-son duo of Ghazala and Haider. The primary characters of the story, and their relationship did not deviate much from Hamlet in the film. But, just like his previous films on Shakespeare’s works, Bharadwaj triumphs, more prominently in this film, in the craft of blending the tragedy of the play with the emotional aspect of the story. Thus, the film becomes very unique and Bhar