**~ HAIDER : Reviews & BO & Awards Thread **~ - Page 56

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Tabu, as the Gertrude character in this adaptation of "Hamlet" set in 1995. CreditUTV Motion Pictures

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Instead of "Haider," the director Vishal Bhardwaj might have considered calling his fast-and-loose adaptation of "Hamlet" "Ghazala," after its Gertrude character.

As played by the sad-eyed Tabu, Ghazala has such depths and mystery that she hijacks the movie, pushing Haider (Hamlet) to the sidelines in his own story. It's her interior drama that draws you in: Where does her loyalty lie? What is she thinking? Will she take up arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, change the tale? (She certainly threatens to once or twice.)

By comparison Haider (Shahid Kapoor) is a simple fellow. In an un-Hamletlike way, he knows what he wants " to avenge his father " and cannily goes after it.

Mr. Bhardwaj has directed two other freewheeling Shakespeare adaptations, both wonderful: "Maqbool," a "Macbeth" set in the Bombay underworld, and "Omkara," an "Othello" whose title character is a half-caste gangster general in the dusty heartland. These movies make Shakespearean tragedy seem a natural lens through which to view contemporary India.

"Haider," which grafts its source story less convincingly to its setting, doesn't flow as organically. Set in 1995 in the violence-racked state of Kashmir, the film was written by Mr. Bhardwaj with the Kashmiri journalistBasharat Peer.

To say that "Haider" succeeds better as a tale of Kashmiri unrest and official brutality " people disappear, are tortured, shot for sport " than it does as a telling of "Hamlet" isn't entirely a knock. "All of Kashmir is a prison," Haider says, and Mr. Bhardwaj and Mr. Peer show the toll on the inmates. In one chilling scene a man, his face covered in a balaclava, plays judge and jury from a Jeep, as civilians are paraded in front of him. With just a movement of his eyes he decides their fate: dismissed or detained.

Though the political backdrop often overwhelms or distorts the family drama, Mr. Bhardwaj provides the occasional sharp reminder of how cinematically he can construct Shakespearean moments. When Haider first returns home, we watch him as he spies, through a scrim of shimmering gauze, an intimate, playful moment between his mother, who sings a Kashmiri folk song, and his uncle (the always excellent Kay Kay Menon). Haider instantly knows the score.

As is often the case in Hindi cinema, the mother-son relationship here is all-important. Its eroticism is heightened (the actors aren't even 10 years apart), and its power axis has shifted, with Ghazala having the upper hand. "Haider" may not be the equal of Mr. Bhardwaj's other Shakespeare films, and it may be deficient in the "Hamlet" department, but it certainly gives good Gertrude.