Haider Review: Why Vishal Bharadwaj is a seditious repile

[tarunraju]

In one of its opening scenes, a Kashmiri doctor performs surgery on a sick and dying terrorist, in his home attic. He's not coerced into that by the terrorist's unhurt teammates, he is the one who diagnoses that the wounded terrorist urgently needs surgery, he then volunteers to take the terrorist and a couple of his teammates home. The following day, Indian Army follows a trail of breadcrumbs that leads them to the doctor's house. They follow procedure, and tell the holed up terrorists to voluntarily surrender, so that nobody gets hurt. Terrorists don't comply. CO sends in in a small team to breach. The team is ambushed. Massive firefight ensues. The terrorists force the CO's hand to use an RPG to blast out a wall. The doctor is arrested. Sounds like an open-and-shut case? No! Vishal Bharadwaj wants you to feel sorry for the doctor, because his oh-so-homely home was blown up by an evil Indian RPG.

The opening scene sets you up for a dysentric vomit of a movie, which is as terrible an adaptation of Hamlet, as Rajneeti was of the Mahabharata (I've studied the original Hamlet). Bharadwaj uses textbook Paki/Hamas logic to twist and turn the facts of a situation, to make it appear as if the Indian Army in Kashmir is Nazi Army in France (WWII), and that Indians have only done evil things in J&K. The attempt to add neutrality to the subject is so halfhearted, it's almost intended to have the opposite effect. An Army spokesperson is made to answer a lady journalist in an almost masochistic way that "but we [the Army] also prevented your rape by Pakistanis." A south-Indian JCO is casually slurred as "Masala Dosa" by the protagonists.

So loose is Bharadwaj's adaptation of Hamlet, that the Indian Army and the Kashmir Conflict of the mid-1990s are used as plot-devices, in a very cruel and unfair way. Watch as Haider summarily judges India and Indian Army as evil, just because his daddy was arrested by the Army for sheltering terrorists (which by law makes him an accomplice to terrorism). Haider expects the Army to release his father just because the army didn't happen to follow AFSPA to the book...despite knowing fully that his father sheltered terrorists, and that death is an approved penalty for terrorism under Indian law! Words can't express the chootiyapa of Bharadwaj's logic!!

The first half is spent almost entirely on similar incidents of India-bashing, based on twisted facts, and flawed interpretation of a situation. The Army and the Kashmir conflict are then discarded like whores, right from the first scene of the second half, in which the film descends into a cliched, overacted adaptation of Hamlet. Mommy cheated on daddy, lead "traitorous" uncle to point the Army in daddy's direction, boo hoo nada nada.

Did you ever find yourself in a situation where you're dying to use that word you just learned in a sentence? And then ended up using that word inappropriately? Haider is like that. Vishal was dying to bash India, he then used Shakespeare's Hamlet to do that, and inappropriately.

Like Rajdeep Sardesai, Vishal Bharadwaj is a venomous reptile who has mastered the art of masking blatant sedition with freedom of expression.

 

[tarunraju]

Retweet if you can.

[tweet]517851474445869056[/tweet]

 

[tarunraju]

This tweet perfectly sums up why this movie is a wrecking ball against India's efforts to win hearts and minds in J&K.

[tweet]518066144003891200[/tweet]

 

[fyodor]

Vishal Bharadwaj apparently made this movie to tell 'their' story. But where will kashmiri's watch this movie?
Most of the cinema halls have been closed in the valley by Islamists because movies and music are against Islam. Women are not allowed to hangout. Grenades are thrown on cinema halls. Whatever liberalism or freedom left in Kashmir is because the Indian Army gives cover.
So Mr Bharadwaj do you want us to have sympathis for shariah nutjobs who want to take away all freedom? Ironically they won't even allow VW to shoot movies as it's against Islam.

 

[tarunraju]

Vishal Bharadwaj apparently made this movie to tell 'their' story. But where will kashmiri's watch this movie?
Most of the cinema halls have been closed in the valley by Islamists because movies and music are against Islam. Women are not allowed to hangout. Grenades are thrown on cinema halls. Whatever liberalism or freedom left in Kashmir is because the Indian Army gives cover.
So Mr Bharadwaj do you want us to have sympathis for shariah nutjobs who want to take away all freedom? Ironically they won't even allow VW to shoot movies as it's against Islam.

Kashmiris are an art-loving people. They have their ways of watching Bollywood movies. If not cinema halls, they'll get theater-print (screener) pirated DVDs. The entire top-brass of CBFC should be sacked.

 

[ladder]

Vishal Bharadwaj apparently made this movie to tell 'their' story. But where will kashmiri's watch this movie?
Most of the cinema halls have been closed in the valley by Islamists because movies and music are against Islam. Women are not allowed to hangout. Grenades are thrown on cinema halls. Whatever liberalism or freedom left in Kashmir is because the Indian Army gives cover.
So Mr Bharadwaj do you want us to have sympathis for shariah nutjobs who want to take away all freedom? Ironically they won't even allow VW to shoot movies as it's against Islam.

In short you want to tell (metaphorically) the filmmaker intends to sell burka in a clothing optional beach? Bad for business, but what if business is last think on his mind?

 

[fyodor]

In short you want to tell (metaphorically) the filmmaker intends to sell burka in a clothing optional beach? Bad for business, but what if business is last think on his mind?

or maybe because he is getting his investment from d-company, anyways most of the movies by this director are flops

 

[thethinker]

Bollywood is becoming very communal as well as anti-national which is disturbing. It is as if trying to glorify and encourage such activities.

Some films of late :

Shaurya - Shows Hindu Indian Army brigader as a bigot who ordered genocide and uses Kashmir atrocities as a backdrop
Gangs of Wassepur - Glorifies fringe Muslim gangsters
Kai Po Che - Uses Godhra backdrop and shows right wing Hindu mob
Singham Returns - Shows a Hindu holyman as a villain
Haider - Glorifies Jihadis and is anti-army

Feel free to add more to the list.

 

[tarunraju]

I'll tell you what's wrong with Bollywood. False advertising. Movies in which the verbs and nouns in the scripts and lyrics are predominantly of Urdu-Arabic etymology, are getting certified by CBFC as "Hindi Feature Films." And young Hindu minds are being exposed to romanticization and glamorization of Urdu and Wahabi bullcrap. It's like ordering mutton biryani at a restaurant, and being served beef biryani instead (and without your knowledge). The effect it's having is that pure Hindi language is somehow "communal" or "funny," and definitely "uncool" among the youth. Words like "ishq," "maula," "mohabbat," are cool.

My solution. I should write a text parser that sorts Hindi-etymology words from Urdu-Persian etymology ones. That parser will be backed by transliterated Urdu and Hindi Google Translate DBs. The parser will focus on verbs and nouns. You feed in a PDF, and a pie-chart comes out, which gives you the proportion of Hindi to Urdu words. Producers should be made to submit scripts and lyrics in PDF format to CBFC before certification. If Urdu nouns and verbs make up >49.9% of the script/lyrics, then the movie should be certified by CBFC as "Urdu," and cinema halls should be made to put language in brackets next to the film titles, in their posters and banners.

 

[Dovah]

I'll tell you what's wrong with Bollywood. False advertising. Movies in which the verbs and nouns in the scripts and lyrics are predominantly of Urdu-Arabic etymology, are getting certified by CBFC as "Hindi Feature Films." And young Hindu minds are being exposed to romanticization and glamorization of Urdu and Wahabi bullcrap. It's like ordering mutton biryani at a restaurant, and being served beef biryani instead (and without your knowledge). The effect it's having is that pure Hindi language is somehow "communal" or "funny," and definitely "uncool" among the youth. Words like "ishq," "maula," "mohabbat," are cool.

And the worst part is super-patriots on this very forum want this Arabised and Persianised version of Hindi to be the national language.

Life imitating art.

 

[Bhadra]

Why write even a review for him.....
Just ignore him..
He is flop and shall reamin so as before...

 

[thethinker]

An interesting fact : Basharat Peer the scriptwriter of Haider is a separatist.

Writing a 3D Kashmiri: Basharat Peer on the challenges of co-scripting Haider - Firstpost

"Starring Shahid Kapoor, the film is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The play tells the story of Hamlet, a Prince of Denmark, who is troubled by his father's death and his mother's decision to marry his father's brother. Hamlet seeks to avenge his father's death and in the process, chaos unfurls in the kingdom.

In order to adapt the 17th century play for 21st century India, Bharadwaj collaborated with journalist and author Basharat Peer. Bharadwaj had got in touch with Peer after the director read Peer's book, Curfewed Night, a poignant account of life in violence-wracked Kashmir. Haider is Peer's first film project."

‘My Nationality a Matter of Dispute’: Basharat Peer - India Real Time - WSJ

"Basharat Peer always felt that Kashmiris living under Indian rule needed to tell their story like the Palestinians, Bosnians, Kurds and other people in conflict zones around the world. That led to his first book "Curfewed Night," an evocative account of Mr. Peer's years growing up in Kashmir as an armed insurgency against the Indian government gradually took root from the late 1980s. In that book, he writes of friends crossing the Line of Control to train in Pakistan for azaadi [freedom], of his identification card becoming a part of his being, of schools being turned into army camps, of lost childhoods."

 

[Free Karma]

From stuff I've seen around the net...I wonder if our general public have already been brainwashed beyond redemption.

 

[Singh]

@thethinker go read Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer, will help you get the other perspective.

And lets be under no illusion, Security forces and States use all powers to quell insurgencies.

 

[thethinker]

@thethinker go read Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer, will help you get the other perspective.

And lets be under no illusion, Security forces and States use all powers to quell insurgencies.

I am sure I will read it after I read some more of what happened to Hindus in Kashmir. @Singh.

As far as using all powers to quell insurgencies are concerned, if the forces do their job they are damned. If they don't and allow a free hand of militancy backed by foreign powers, they are again damned!

 

[pkroyal]

Vishal Bharadwaj is from Gulzar's School of thinking & melodrama.

Remember " Maachis" ? supporting the militant point of view directed by Gulzar .

Gulzar has a never ending pine to head for his village in Paki land !!

Lets bundle off both Gulzar & Vishal to Pak & get rid of the seditious Guru & Chela

 

[ashdoc]

@thethinker go read Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer, will help you get the other perspective.

And lets be under no illusion, Security forces and States use all powers to quell insurgencies.

yeah , your community ( sikhs ) have some bad memories of use of those powers . but use of those methods is the very reason why punjab is peaceful today .

 

[Apollyon]

yeah , your community ( sikhs ) have some bad memories of use of those powers . but use of those methods is the very reason why punjab is peaceful today .

Singh (Mod) ≠ Sikh

 

[ashdoc]

Haider's convenient half-truths and some inconvenient answers
A story with the first four chapters missing.

Many years ago, I saw a Nat Geo Special. A snake slithers up a tree to a nest where a bird is watching over her eggs. Frightened at the mere sight of the snake, she takes flight, the snake eats the eggs, destroys the nest and slithers back only to a find an alligator in the swamp. The predator suddenly becomes the prey. The snake manages to escape the powerful jaws of the alligator but not before it is badly bruised, almost unfit to be a predator anymore.

If you are Vishal Bharadwaj, your movie would not depict the snake as a predator but as mere prey, a badly bruised and injured reptile incapable of doing any harm. What you are told would obviously be the truth but an incomplete one.

So the unwitting viewer is given a book of history with first four chapters missing, without even making a mention that they ever existed. When you have a movie that is set in the Kashmir of 1995, you have to deal with the baggage of history. You cannot gloss over what happened from 1989 to 1995.

The filmmaker chooses to ignore those significant years which saw hundreds of temples being razed to dust, thousands of houses burnt after being looted, which saw this very majority, which is portrayed as almost subjugated, participating in a gory ritual of driving away the minorities and being the subjugators themselves.

There is a convenient script and an inconvenient half truth which makes the very edifice of the movie suspect and thus less credible.

The movie is a work of fiction, an adaptation of Shakaspeare's Hamlet against the backdrop of armed insurgency in Kashmir. The plot is an intelligent idea which is used to target AFSPA (which in the movie is called chutzpah), raise the issue of "disappeared people", talk about "half-widows" and interrogation centres.

The motive is thus essentially to raise all the issues which are high on agenda of the separatists. Ideally nothing wrong with that as long as you raise them along with the issues of religious cleansing, Islamic radicalisation, and protection of minorities.

Haider comes home to see his house in ruins (a strong sense of déjà vu filled me, my home too was set on fire, unfortunately by our own neighbours), to find his mother (Tabu) having an affair with his uncle. He then sets out to look for his "disappeared" father (in the movie that means picked up by the Army but not returned home), is mistreated (by who else but Army), meets Roohdar, a terrorist, who ends up telling him that his father is buried in the unmarked graveyards.

Roohdar (Irfan Khan) also tells him that it is his own uncle (Kay Kay Menon) who conspired to have his father killed. In a very subtle manner you see the Army being painted as the villain although it is lust of his own mother for her brother-in-law that leads to his father's killing.

That brings me to the Clock Tower of Lal Chowk, a scene in which Haider is shown as having lost his equanimity of mind. He talks about azadi and blabbers other nonsense. A stone's throw away from where the scene is enacted is the Palladium Cinema. Did Vishal Bharadwaj not see the cinema hall in ruins?

Did it not occur to him that his movie Haider would have been released in this cinema hall and maybe it could have run packed house for many weeks because of the kind of movie he was making? Did he not ask his screenplay writer or other Kashmiris why cinema halls in Kashmir were shut and under whose orders?

Did this not tantamount to the curtailment of freedom of speech? Or maybe he knew all the answers and knew they were incorrect questions and would beget inconvenient answers?

Or maybe he knew, to borrow a quote from Hamlet, that between incestuous sheets the separatists and him shared a cosy relationship and this was the price he was paying for shooting in Kashmir especially after he had been attacked in Kashmir University.

Post Script: In 14th Century, an Islamic invader called Sikander Butshikan (iconoclast) destroyed the Martand Sun Temple. Books of history tell us of the great architectural marvel that this temple was. The invader had all the idols defaced and broken.They tried burning the temple but a stone temple wouldn't burn.

+When I saw the song "Bismil" (which was irrelevant to the movie in any case and could have been shot anywhere else in Kashmir) being pictured there with this big black gory puppet inside the temple, I couldn't resist but ask if Bharadwaj would have dared to do something similar in a mosque, a church or even a gurudwara?



Haider's convenient half-truths and some inconvenient answers

 

[cobra commando]

Few Thoughts on Haider | Random Thoughts of a Demented Mind