By Pradipta Mukherjee
William Shakespeare’s Hamlet has been produced in a multiplicity of languages, all over the world – in English, Bengali, Hindi, Danish, Greek, Japanese, Malayalam, Romani, Tibetan and Turkish. Given the very different visual registers, or filmic registers of two different films from India, one in Hindi and the other in Bangla, —Haider (2014) and Hemanta (2016), respectively, both films attest to, Shakespeare’s play’s global adaptability and transcreative energies. Such adaptations are ingenious transpositions. Multiple cultures from all over the globe have claimed Shakespeare’s Hamlet as their own, reinstating faith in Shakespeare’s adaptability.
The Indian Hamlets too have made their vital presence felt in the map of world cinema. Anjan Dutta’s daringly self-conscious and sleek Bengali Hamlet (Hemanta) gives real evidence of its postmodern intertextuality and reveals the strong presence of non-Anglophone Hamlet in the world of Shakespeare cinema. In this kind of contemporary Bengali recontextualisation of Hamlet, a strong regional dialectic is at play and the aim is not authenticity or entirely fidelity to Shakespeare, but rather the move to contemporise Shakespeare into one’s own culture and one’s own current concerns. Here global has collapsed with the local to form the “glocal” and there is this constant intersection of the local with the global. This indicates the effects of globalisation, digital technology, the movement from single-screen theatres to multiplex and the gradual popularisation of Shakespeare.
Such glocalisation of cinema not only declares the end of cultural imperialism but also challenges Hollywood’s global domination of the film industry. The phenomenon has resulted in the democratisation of Shakespeare. Films like Haider and Hemanta, speak to the audience from their Indian cultural positions (one needs to take into account the national and regional, cultural diversity of India)—and we respond from our own subject positions to such adaptations. Shakespeare is not “Englished” and “Americanised” but there is a conscious decision to move beyond an Anglophone focus, to non-Anglophone registers. The tendency is to focus on a multinational, global or dispersed bard who is seen to replace an English bard.
Hemanta and Haider tell us not just about the astonishing nature of Shakespeare’s adaptability but alert us to the fact that Shakespeare is present in these movies through the use of allusions, ironic citations, pastiche, parody and largely, intertextuality. We are almost taken aback by their surprising affinity to Shakespeare.
It is not just Shakespeare’s Hamlet which exists as an intertext in Haider, but Vishal Bhardwaj’s sustained deployment of Bashrat Peer’s Kashmiri war memoir Curfewed Night (detailing the realities in insurgency-torn, conflict-driven Kashmir in the 1990s.) Urdu poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz features as intertext. It helps Haider to intertextually interrogate “Bollywood” (a rather contested term) and also helps to enhance the transcultural appeal of Bollywood. Such new age non-Anglophone Shakespeare filmmakers have invited the audience to look at Shakespeare’s plays in challenging new ways.
How do we look at Haider? As an espionage thriller, a mainstream Bollywood film, or a social realist drama that speaks of Kashmir as a valley of gloom and death, foregrounding the larger political discourse of the nation? Haider draws attention to those histories of violent conflict and border crossings, contestations surrounding the tropes of home and homelessness, and to some, the film is a humanist response to the Kashmir struggle.
This is the hybrid nature of appropriation that makes way for an interesting cultural dialogue between the film text and its literary precursor or other sources. It is important to unlock location-specific visions and constructions through mise-en-scene, sound and style. As Bhardwaj says, Hamlet reminds us of the harsh truth in our own backyard.
Vishal Bhardwaj, Anjan Dutta, and directors from other parts of the globe, including English language Shakespeare directors, like Baz Luhrmann, Michael Almereyda, Tim Blake Nelson, Gil Junger, Al Pacino, all see Shakespeare as our contemporary and find in Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Richard III or Hamlet, narratives that speak powerfully over time to our own age but, even more important, seem to originate naturally from our own cultural ethos or our own cultural milieu.
Vishal Bhardwaj’s and Anjan Dutt’s deliberate self-referentiality, and deliberate self-reflexivity happen to be quite striking. Haider and Hemanta, two very different films on Hamlet from India, intentionally present themselves as “alternative Shakespeare” –especially to the accessible model established by international directors like Laurence Olivier, Franco Zeffirelli and Kenneth Branagh. Branagh’s epic version of Hamlet (1996) or say Michael Almereyda’s postmodern media pastiche—Hamlet (2000) are a few such instances. Other than the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well (1960) and Grigori Kozintsev’s Soviet Gamlet (1964), non-Anglophone traditions of film interpretations of Hamlet have remained remarkably underrepresented. Mark Thornton Burnett in his book Hamlet and World Cinema has taken the responsibility to alert us to the general neglect of non-Anglophone Hamlet adaptations from all over the globe. He states this has resulted in a “failure to grasp the crucial importance accorded to Shakespeare’s most celebrated hero in the international imaginary”.
Hemanta explores themes of power, corruption, and the consequences of unchecked ambition. It delves into the complexities of familial relationships, duty versus desire, and the struggle to define one’s identity in the face of societal expectations. Hemanta evolves from a conflicted young prince into a decisive leader who grapples with the moral implications of his actions. Kalyani serves as a complex character torn between her loyalty to her son and her desire to maintain her position of power. Arjun embodies the archetype of the villainous usurper consumed by his thirst for power and willing to commit unspeakable acts to achieve his goals.
Anjan Dutta’s Hemanta presents metafilmic modes of seeing, remembering and constructing meaning out of Shakespeare’s text. In Hemanta, the modernisation is ingenuous and stylish. A key idea that Anjan Dutta shares with Michael Almereyda is in both their films, it seems that the sensitive, creative young people are trapped in a prison that thwarts their creativity and individuality whether it is the actor Parambrata or Ethan Hawke. Hemanta, the film, subscribes to Bengali art and literature, its rich cultural legacies against the backdrop of a corrupting modernity. There are subtle allusions to Ritwik Ghatak and Satyajit Ray from Indian parallel cinema, in Hemanta’s mise en scene.
The Gertrude figure Gayatri (Gargee Roy Chowdhury) in Hemanta, is an ageing actor and the love interest of Kalyan (Claudius) and Gayatri is also Hemanta’s mother. The subtle, passionate psycho-sexual dynamics of Gayatri and Hemanta often take centre-stage (reminding us of Mel Gibson’s and Glen Close’s dynamics in Franco Zefirelli’s Hamlet. Homoerotic affiliations take centre stage in Hemanta but the Oedipal mother-son relationship is prioritised and Gayatri-Hemanta and Olipriya-Hemanta relationships are never marginalised or pushed to the sidelines.
If the primary axis is Hemanta and Hirak (the Horatio) figure who is Hemanta’s half-brother and friend, and Yuri, Hirak’s gay partner (and such an axis is noted for an allied, entangled nexus of sometimes sublimated and sometimes open—sexual energies and rivalries) then the other two axis, despite lesser screen time, would be, Hemanta and Gayatri and Hemanta and Olipriya. A gay subject position is dominant but Gayatri’s and Olipriya’s point of view contributes significantly to the creation of meanings in Hemanta.
Despite technological, mass media and communication revolutions in the present decades with retrospective effect if we bring into perspective the other Hamlet films (because Hamlet is the world’s most frequently filmed text) like say the Mel Gibson starrer Franco Zeffirelli’s Hamlet we see that Zeffirelli gave us a historical film in the form of an action blockbuster, and Hamlet has seen several other genres of adaptations like crime drama, urban thriller, corporate parody, comic fantasy and martial arts epic to suggest a few.
Bhardwaj’s Haider, a political film set in Kashmir, explores themes of political turmoil, insurgency and the impact of militarisation on civilians. Through its narrative, the film offers a critical commentary on the socio-political landscape of the region and raises important questions about power, identity and justice.
In Haider, there is a complex visual grammar at work. There is poetry in its landscape, in its soundscape. The reverberating ghazals of Faiz Ahmed Faiz leave a lasting impact. Haider engages in an intimate dialogue with the Shakespearean text and the film uniquely mobilises sound, sense and image and necessitates an attuned absorption in music, score, “look” language, poetry and literary tradition.
Such poetic interludes serve to deepen the emotional resonance of the scenes evoke a sense of nostalgia and provide thematic resonance. The poetry in Haider adds layers of meaning to the story, enhancing its lyrical and metaphorical qualities while also contributing to its overall aesthetic and artistic richness.
The poetry in Haider is brilliantly translated to its visuals; (in Indian Hamlet adaptations there is this locus of historically illuminating retroactions between not just literary and film texts, but also film texts and stage plays like Bratya Basu’s Hemlat: The Prince of Garanhata (2006) and Asit Basu’s Kolkatar Hamlet (1989) in Hemanta; and Basharat Peer’s war memoir/journalistic writing from Curfewed Night (2010), or Faiz Ahmed Faiz, in Haider; articulating complex cultural identities and anxieties.
However, the film Haider was also critiqued for not representing the plight of Kashmiri Pandits (the protagonist, Haider, played by Sharad Kapoor, is a Kashmiri Muslim) and the controversy surrounding the ancient, historical Sun Temple in Kashmir is represented as the den of the devil. A section of Hindus launched an attack on the film for hurting the religious sentiments of the Hindus. There are points of contestation and the source text and the film adaptation reinforce and complement each other’s complex visual and cultural registers. Haider seamlessly blends elements of Shakespearean drama with contemporary issues to create a compelling and thought-provoking adaptation of Hamlet.
It is indeed important to explore non-Anglophone Shakespeare transcreations from all over the globe and open up fresh avenues for further research.
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