Haider is a 2014 Indian Hindi-language political action thriller film directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, who co-produced it with Siddharth Roy Kapur, and written by Bhardwaj and Basharat Peer. It stars Shahid Kapoor, Tabu, Kay Kay Menon, Shraddha Kapoor and Irrfan Khan.
Set amidst the insurgency-hit Kashmir conflicts of 1995, Haider is a modern-day adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. It is also based on Basharat Peer's memoir Curfewed Night. Haider, a young student and a poet, returns to Kashmir at the peak of the conflict to seek answers about his father's disappearance and ends up being tugged into the politics of the state. Haider is the third installment of Bhardwaj's Shakespearean trilogy after Maqbool (2003) and Omkara (2006).
The film was screened at the 19th Busan International Film Festival, and released worldwide on 2 October 2014 to widespread critical acclaim; it was a major commercial success, earning ₹85 crore worldwide and garnering attention from the media due to its controversial subject matter. The subject matter, direction, story, screenplay, film score, cinematography, editing, and performances of the ensemble cast received high critical praise and garnered several accolades. However, the film faced backlash for its graphic depiction of alleged human rights abuses and torture by Indian security forces in Kashmir, which many described as an "unfair" portrayal of the armed forces. Hindu nationalist groups accused it of sympathizing with separatists and launched a boycott campaign, while some audiences and commentators labelled it provocation or propaganda. The film was banned in Pakistan.
Haider was the first Indian film to win the People's Choice Award at the Rome Film Festival. At the 62nd National Film Awards, Haider won a leading 5 awards: Best Music Direction (Bhardwaj), Best Male Playback Singer (Sukhwinder Singh for "Bismil"), Best Dialogue (Bhardwaj), Best Choreography (Sudesh Adhana for "Bismil") and Best Costume Design (Dolly Ahluwalia). At the 60th Filmfare Awards, Haider received 9 nominations, including Best Film and Best Director (Bhardwaj), and won 5 awards including Best Actor (Shahid Kapoor), Best Supporting Actor (Menon) and Best Supporting Actress (Tabu).
Plot
During the insurgency in Kashmir, which continues through 1995, Hilaal Meer, a doctor based in Srinagar, agrees to perform an appendectomy on Ikhlaque, the leader of a terrorist group; to avoid detection, he performs the surgery at his house, much to the chagrin of his wife Ghazala, who questions his allegiance. The following day, during a military raid, Hilaal is accused of harboring terrorists. A shootout ensues at his home, during which Ikhlaque is killed and Hilaal is taken away for questioning. The doctor's house is subsequently bombed to kill any other terrorists hiding inside.
Sometime later, Ghazala's son Haider returns from Aligarh Muslim University to seek answers about his father's disappearance. Upon arrival, he is shocked to find his mother singing and laughing along with her brother-in-law, Khurram, Hilaal's younger brother. Unable to understand Ghazala's behavior, he begins searching for Hilaal in various police stations and detention camps with the help of his childhood sweetheart Arshia Lone, a journalist, whose father, Pervez, is a police officer.
Winter arrives in Kashmir. Saddened by the growing closeness between Ghazala and Khurram, and still unable to find any leads, Haider begins to lose hope. However, Arshia encounters a stranger, Roohdaar, who has Haider contact him to receive information regarding his missing father. Roohdaar, who is part of a pro-separatist group, explains that he and Hilaal were both imprisoned in a detention camp by a counterinsurgency militia formed by Khurram. The group had both Hilaal and Roohdaar executed, but Roohdaar survived and is meeting Haider to pass on Hilaal's final wish: for Haider to take revenge on Khurram for his betrayal.
Devastated and enraged, Haider begins behaving erratically, shaving his head and staging public demonstrations against the government and AFSPA. Khurram takes him aside and claims that Roohdaar was responsible for Hilaal's death; Haider is put off by the conflicting claims of Hilaal's demise despite knowing the truth himself, and confides his dilemma to Arshia, showing her the gun given to him to kill Khurram. Arshia, in turn, confides about Haider's actions to Pervez, who in turn passes the information forward to Khurram, who orders Haider institutionalized during a ceremony officiating his marriage to Ghazala.
The following morning, Haider prepares to kill Khurram, but morally abstains from it on seeing that Khurram is in prayer. He is captured by Pervez, who orders him executed. However, Haider escapes and brutally murders his two captors, the Salmans, former friends of his who became informants for Pervez while he was away. He contacts Roohdaar, who suggests that he travel to Pakistan to receive military training. Haider calls Ghazala to inform her that he is going across the border, but Ghazala meets with him before he leaves at the ruins of their family home. She admits informing Khurram about the presence of terrorists in her home on the day of Hilaal's arrest, but claims to have been unaware at the time that Khurram was Pervez's informant. Pervez receives word of Haider's whereabouts and arrives at the house to assassinate him, but Haider kills him first and escapes.
Arshia is emotionally traumatized by learning of her father's death at the hands of her lover, and commits suicide. Meanwhile, Ghazala finds Roohdaar's contact number in Arshia's diary and calls him. Haider goes to his pickup point, the graveyard where Hilaal was buried. However, he spots a nearby funeral, which he realizes is for Arshia. He defies the advice of his handlers and interrupts the procession, leading to a fight with Arshia's brother, Liyaqat, who dies in the scuffle. Khurram and his men arrive at the house, engaging in a gunfight that leaves most of Khurram's men dead. Ghazala is dropped off at the house by Roohdaar and begs Khurram for a chance to get Haider to surrender. Haider remains insistent on revenge, but Ghazala warns him that revenge merely begets revenge. She bids him farewell and returns to Khurram's men, where she detonates a suicide vest given to her by Roohdaar. Khurram is gravely injured and his men killed; Haider prepares to kill him, but remembers Ghazala's parting words discouraging revenge. He walks away from the site of the blast, despite Khurram's pleas to end his life.
Cast
Production
Development Vishal Bhardwaj first ought to direct romantic film 2 States and ask Shah Rukh Khan to play to role. However, Khan rejected it for playing back to back romantic films, and wanted a darker role, so he asked Bhardwaj to cast him in Haider, but Bhardwaj rejected back. Initially, Vishal Bhardwaj and Shahid Kapoor were in talks of making a sequel to their previous collaboration, the action drama Kaminey (2009). The project was put on hold and a new project with Kapoor in the lead was confirmed, titled as Haider, which was reportedly based on an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. The adaptation was made to portray the political intrigue and history of Kashmir as well as the play's sexual conflicts.
Bhardwaj was initially developing the play as a contemporary espionage thriller with author Stephen Alter. They wrote a 30-page synopsis that was sent to Gulzar. Though Gulzar liked the synopsis, he enquired Bhardwaj of the missing tragedy of Hamlet in the penned thriller. The synopsis had incomplete details about the life, authenticity and the Official Secrets Act of RAW agents. On his return to India, Bharadwaj's wife Rekha Bhardwaj was reading Basharat Peer's memoir, Curfewed Night, a book based on life in violence-wrecked Kashmir. Rekha was deeply moved after reading the book. Bharadwaj didn't immediately read the book but was aware about its content. Later, Bhardwaj desired to change the synopsis. Remembering Peer's book, he contacted him and they started working on the script. Bhardwaj quoted Peer's importance in the film as, "If Basharat was not a part of the film, Haider wouldn't be made or it wouldn't be made this way." The film is Peer's first film project. On co-scripting the same, he stated that writing Curfewed Night was a response to caricatures of Kashmiris in Indian political writing whereas he wrote Haider in the same spirit, with the same feeling with Bhardwaj.
Bhardwaj and Peer agonised a lot over the soliloquies required. There were sections of the To be, or not to be speech that was translated directly in Hindi. Due to constraints of time they had to omit the Apparel maketh a man soliloquy though. They retained and translated the section where Hamlet meets Rosencrantz and Guildenstern and speaks about Denmark being in prison. Further, new soliloquies were created to convey Hamlet's madness and the veiled political satire in it. This was brought in when Haider with his head shaved, dressed in torn, shabby clothes rants on a traffic roundabout in Srinagar and apart from a few senseless jokes, reads out the bare act of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. Apart from this, Peer explained that an adaptation doesn't exactly follow the original, like the part of Fortinbras was barely there in Haider. The world of King Claudius and Polonius is portrayed as the counter-insurgency and government-run, counter-insurgent militias in Haider and thematically dominates the action.
As per the story of Hamlet, an Oedipus complex exists that draws Hamlet (played by Shahid Kapoor) towards his mother Gertrude (played by Tabu) that could have been interpreted both at a physical and psychological level, however, Bhardwaj kept this reference subtle as the target audience was predominantly Indian and called it 'one of the aspects in this mother-son relationship.' In his previous outing of Othellos adaptation, Omkara (2006), he removed the last monologue due to the fact that it was more suited for a stage play sequence but retained that type of monologue for Haider. Shahid Kapoor learnt a 6-page monologue for the climactic scene where his character Haider turns mad. He put forth the delivery of that monologue in front of a crowd of 5000 listening. For filming the scene, which was done in 3–4 hours, Shahid Kapoor was made completely bald.
Sumit Kaul, who played the character of one of the Salmans, was involved in training the Kashmiri accent of actress Tabu apart from lead actors Shahid and Shraddha. His portions of filming were canned in 15 days, however, he was with the team for months in Kashmir. He taught the nuances of how a native Kashmiri would speak in English or Hindi.
Kaul also helped actress Tabu get the enunciation when she sang the folk song "Roshe Valle" that was a part of the film score.
Kapoor, along with Bhardwaj and UTV Motion Pictures, each have a 33.3% share in the film. The budget for the film is taking into account spent into the production of the film and for promotions.