A CRITICAL STUDY OF INDIGENIZED SCREEN ADAPTATIONS OF SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS BY FILM-MAKER, VISHAL BHARDWAJ

Abstract

Shakespearean tragedies are redolent with the highs and lows of human emotions, hence, are not restricted to the boundaries of any one era. Many films made in western advanced countries have successfully captured and displayed these emotions on the silver screen.  Namrata Joshi, a film critic, noted, regarding Shakespeare that, “Shakespeare’s plays with their dramatic strength and superb portrayal of the universal truths of human nature, have always lent themselves well to adaptation to different times and places” While many Indian films have been modeled on Shakespeare’s plots, Vishal Bharadwaj, the Indian filmmaker, has been highly successful in indigenizing these plays in his formally acknowledged screen adaptations. This paper is an attempt to scrutinize how Shakespeare’s tragedies have been utterly absorbed into the Indian imagination by Vishal Bhardwaj’s cinematic trilogy: Maqbool, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Macbeth; Omkara, an adaptation of Othello and Haider, an adaptation of Hamlet.