How Shakespeare was adapted into Hindi film

Shakespeare was first exposed to me in school, just like many of us. However, it was not so much something to be understood as it was a chapter in a book to be read and written for an exam.

According to Vishal Bhardwaj, “it was not only because of their mature themes, but also the complexity and toughness of their language,” reinforcing the popular culture’s “highbrow” perception of the Bard.from Shakespeare was everything from sophisticated in his own day. Shakespeare’s artistry has been evident in Bhardwaj’s adaptations of the Bard’s masterpieces, from Maqbool to Omkara and Haider, which are brimming with emotion, drama, and pure theater.

Maqbool, my first film in the Shakespeare trilogy, was an unintentional adaptation of Macbeth. I came discovered it by accident when traveling back from my godson’s boarding school on a train. It was a little narrative in his schoolbook. I was looking for a tale that could take place against the background of the underworld at the time, and Macbeth seemed like the ideal choice. I didn’t read any of Shakespeare’s other works till after that. They are not only ageless, but also human in a manner that makes them adaptable to any environment or society. Shakespeare’s characters are still relevant and modern because human characteristics never change.

“Iago is among the best antagonistic characters the Bard has ever written.”
Shakespeare’s second piece that I adapted was Omkara Othello. The man I look up to for artistic affirmation, Naseer Bhai (Naseeruddin Shah), said that Othello was Shakespeare’s worst play. However, I found the figure of Iago, who in the end weaves the tragic arc of the protagonist, to be very fascinating. One of the Bard’s greatest antagonistic characters, in my opinion, is Iago. After I finished writing my script, I showed it to Naseer bhai, who approved of my adaption and said it was great. And so Othello by William Shakespeare became my Omkara.

“Kashmir was in a comparable condition of affairs—to be or not to be,” much like Hamlet.
Haider
It took me eight years to finish the trilogy after that. The procedure took a long time since there were so many plays and so many different methods to adapt them. Ultimately, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and King Lear were the only rivals remaining. I ultimately went with Hamlet, which became Haider’s third installment in my trilogy. I thought it more interesting to delve into the characters in Hamlet because of their extraordinary intricacy. Although Hamlet’s characters are unlike any other, they share a common sense of despair. Each of the connections between the mother, the father, the uncle, the ghost, and themselves had its own subtleties. They are black and intricately layered. I became much more pleased when I discovered Kashmir to be its background. Kashmir was in a similar situation as Hamlet. It questioned, “to be, or not to be,” much like Hamlet.

How the three tragedies were shaped by Bharadwaj’s films
Professor Jonathan Gil Harris, a former president of the Shakespeare Society of India, discusses Bhardwaj’s body of work and emphasizes how the plays are shaped by the films. Regarding Maqbool, he states, “Bhardwaj’s Maqbool, which is set in the Mumbai criminal underworld, adds a Bollywood masala aspect to Shakespeare’s tale: the title character kills his gang leader in order to fulfill his forbidden love for his boss’s mistress as well as to acquire power. Maqbool is more like a broken Romeo than a monster. Similar to how Indu, Langda’s wife, “gets the last say in Omkara” by killing her husband in retaliation, and how Hamlet’s famous query in Haider “becomes a question of a people longing for freedom: ‘hum hain ki hum nahin,'”