Haider: Desperately seeking Hamlet in the Valley of Kashmir

Vishal Bhardwaj’s Kashmir drama is a beautifully acted but sloppily assembled adaptation of the Shakespeare classic.

Haider is Vishal Bhardwaj’s third attempt to map William Shakespeare’s texts, characters and plotting patterns for India’s social and political realities. The English playwright’s brooding tragedies have vastly helped the ambitious filmmaker chart new directions for well-travelled themes. Macbeth reoriented the mafia movie (Maqbool), while Othello seemed perfect to explore caste and power relations in Uttar Pradesh (Omkara).