1. Haider takes procrastination out of Hamlet! Bhardwaj's Hamlet is all action! Hamlet's inability to act is positioned in the trajectory of his desire which vanishes due to a lack of mourning and gets revived when another mourning takes due course capturing him at its centre. It would be interesting to speculate if this dominance of action over contemplation is governed by Bhardwaj's more explicit politicization of the Shakespeare protagonist. Hamlet studied philosophy, Haider studies revolutionary poets in British India.
2. The theme of mourning is deepened with a Gertrude (Ghazaala/Tabu) who has more agency than ever. Haider mourns her as much as he mourns his father! Hamlet does not have his Horatio here which is a statement on the void of friendship in the world portrayed in the film. Having said that, it gives a fascinating twist to the subject of mourning in Shakespeare's play. In Shakespeare, Horatio is the surviving subject who would be in perpetual mourning in the imagined after-life of the play while in the film, Haider himself becomes that (in)terminal subject of mourning who survives in spite of himself. The subject in mourning shifts from Other to the self. The rest isn't silence in Bhardwaj! There is no rest for silence!
3. The dead father of Shakespeare's play remains 'disappeared' throughout the first half which has serious consequences for the procrastination motif. Hamlet starts the search in thin air but eventually succeeds in finding his father's grave. In the first half, he isn't in mourning; his quest is directed towards a 'localization' of the father which succeeds ironically in the grave. 'To be or not to be' extends into 'is it (true) or is it not (true)?' and Haider's quest for truth amid the persistent haze of Kashmir.
4. The Hamlet-Laertes relationship is reduced to rivalry while it was much more complex in Shakespeare. Laertes was in a sense Hamlet's idealized alter-ego--a lot of what he wanted to become. And hence it was a great fight in the play, unlike in Bhardwaj's film.
5. Ophelia as Haider's 'Arshee'/mirror is a weak link in the film. For me, that strand wasn't moving enough. The nunnery scene was omitted but beautifully supplemented by an appearance of betrayal. Although the scene where she is lying on her bed with the scattered threads of wool all around her glowing with the poignancy of a lost grip on reality was appealing, not having her float on the water was a missed opportunity. There was a great chance to connect the iconic image of Ophelia's floating body with the mythological presence of the 'jhelum'--- the river of Kashmir with all its cathartic water. The ice in the latter half of the film perhaps stood for a frozen demise of that redemptive possibility.
6. Haider is more of a Hamlet adaptation set in Kashmir than a political film on Kashmir. The statement on Kashmir is essentially humanist; in explicit empathy for the suffering of the civilian population and in implicit sympathy for their right to protest and militancy. Having said that, I think the portrayal of Kashmir and the border-line irony of nationalistic jingoism in the film cannot be wrenched from its status as an adaptation of Hamlet.
It probably lacks intensity as a film on Kashmir but not as a Shakespeare adaptation. However, the portrayal of Kashmir which is carefully controlled and works through thesis and antithesis is subversive without being outright revolutionary. It's not politically correct but it isn't full on either! The climax comes as a stopper at the cusp where Hamlet's journey threatens to grow out of the familial scene and move into the larger political domain but the film cleverly arrests the transition at the point where it was about to turn!
7. There is no Yorick as such but his skull is intact! To make militants of gravediggers is consistent with the way the film consistently implied the connection between terrorist militancy and death drive. And this added layers to the graveyard as the climactic setting! The graveyard which was doubled through the climax with mutilated corpses etched across the bloody surface of ice reminded me of a Jacobean revenge tragedy! It's viscerally spectacular; almost an Artaud on Shakespeare!
8. Though the climax was more Seneca than Shakespeare in a sense, I think, to withdraw the revenge was a political message partly driven by the fact that the film is set in Kashmir. Is it an adaptive modification of Shakespeare or more of a comment on Kashmir? What arrests and fixes his desire in the final run is the desire of his mother which reiterates the patrilineal family heritage. This echoing is a touch problematic from a gender perspective perhaps.
My interest as a Lacanian reader is focused on how Haider's final decision to retract and go beyond revenge is framed in entirety by the words of his significant dead Others (his father and his mother echoing his grandfather). It is a combination of his mother's and (grand) father's desire articulated in their voices ringing in Haider's mind but interestingly, it doesn't lead him to action as action but instead to action as withdrawal of action. Haider's final withdrawal is perhaps the obverse of Hamlet's procrastination!
9. I thought it was quite a master-stroke to parody Salman khan and his Brand Bollywood through Rosencrantz and Guildenstern...it was a much needed comic relief in a broodingly dark film.
10. The Oedipal subtext of Hamlet was maintained as a subtext and not overplayed thankfully! From a post-Lacanian perspective, the desire of the mother is more functional than the desire for the mother. And Haider stands in testimony to that. His final trail through blood and ice re-turned to his trail as a 'third' separating his mother from his father in the bed--an earlier scene in the film. Just as we need to think through the relation between the two burnt houses and Ophelia's corpse in the latter, there are these two trails to consider as well.
11. Lasting images, powerful music and great performances to close this list...nothing that I can say by way of analysis about Tabu's performance. To remember what Hamm said in Beckett's Endgame, she is like the vein which never stops dripping in the head! She is the divided border of explosions!
Without taking anything away from Shahid's natural performance, it's Tabu's film! The heap of her destroyed body is the splintered motherland of Kashmir where Haider keeps his final vigil of mourning!
