Is Haider about incest?

Originally posted by: NailClipper

I didn't watch the movie yet. But didn't Masand say Tabu agreed to do this movie only when Vishal made her Shahid's stepmom? So, it's not incest.. it's not oedipal either.

Originally posted by: NailClipper

I didn't watch the movie yet. But didn't Masand say Tabu agreed to do this movie only when Vishal made her Shahid's stepmom? So, it's not incest.. it's not oedipal either.

Here's the article (check the bold bit)..

How to be a bold Young Mother to a Grown Man

Irrfan Khan, Tabu, Kay Kay Menon, Shahid Kapoor, Shraddha Kapoor...Vishal Bhardwaj assembled a terrific cast for his Hamlet adaptation Haider, but contrary to what one would imagine, not every actor was drawn to the project like bees to honey. The director revealed to me that it was hardest convincing Tabu to take the role of Hamlet's mother: "She refused the film twice, insisting she wouldn't play mother to Shahid Kapoor."

He understands her reluctance, he says. "There is a tendency in this industry to stereotype actors. And naturally she was concerned that if she played mother to a grown man once, she'd be approached only for mother roles here on." But the project needed a solid actor in that role, so the options were limited. "When I went back to her for the third time, I asked her to see the character as Gertrude from Hamlet, not Shahid's mother," Vishal explains. "There's so much to Gertrude, and she's crucial to the story." Tabu relented subsequently, and Vishal insists her performance is what holds the film together.

Not one to shy away from uncomfortable material, Vishal embraced the Oedipal undertones in the relationship between mother and son. In one scene that I was invited to watch, Shahid's Haider enters Tabu's room as she sits before the mirror beautifying herself. She reminds him how as a boy he'd insist on sleeping between her and his father, and would get upset each time his father so much as touched her. "And now my uncle touches you," he replies stingingly, while lovingly applying perfume to her neck. Her wordless reactions alone may be worth the price of a ticket. Pretty bold too for a commercial Hindi film, you'd have to agree.

What Vishal didn't tell me however, but I learnt from asking around, is that Tabu took the part only after the director agreed to make the character Haider's stepmother and not his birth mother, thereby conveying to the audience that she was considerably younger than his father, and not necessarily much older to him. Shrewd.

https://www.openthemagazine.com/article/voices/how-to-be-a-bold-young-mother-to-a-grown-man