Haider Response

As an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Haider retained the majority of the plot and thematic elements of the famous stage play while modifying the backdrop to be the conflict of Kashmir rather than the conflict between Denmark and Norway. However, Haider deviated from Hamlet in a few crucial places, most notably in the climax and ending of the story. In this response, I will delve deeper into the major differences between the two stories’ endings as well as the possible significance of these differences.

Firstly and most obviously, Haider and Khurram do not die while Hamlet and Claudius do. (It is possible that Khurram does end up dying considering his severely injured state, but the film ends while he is still alive.) Haider’s motivations for not killing Khurram are unclear – we do not know if he wanted to prolong his uncle’s torture, or if he was unable to bear killing his uncle. Regardless, we see the breaking of a cycle as Haider heeds his mother’s words of “Revenge begets revenge.” In Hamlet, Hamlet suffers the same death by poison as his father does, and the cycle of revenge comes full circle. In Haider, however, Haider has a different ending than his father does, perhaps showing that reform is possible and that we do have free will in our actions. Haider’s filmmaker also avoids the theme of death being unavoidable, as we still have major characters living at the end. However, their endings are very undignified, with Khurram incapacitated and amputated (representing a loss of his power) and Haider stumbling away, and the lack of death precludes a sense of closure (just as the conflict in Kashmir has not been “closed” yet).  Also, Hamlet’s death had allowed Fortinbras to give Hamlet a grand burial and glorify him, while no such thing took place in Haider. Thus, the filmmaker is purposefully avoiding painting Haider as a hero or as anyone worth celebrating.

Another noticeable difference in the ending (and throughout the film as well) is the lack of an equivalent to the character of Horatio. Horatio was supposed to be the keeper of the tragedy and ensure that the story would be shared for eternity. In Haider, perhaps Haider will be the one to carry on the story as he is still alive, or perhaps the movie itself, in a sense, is the manner by which this story will gain immortality. Horatio was also the voice of reason throughout the play as well as Hamlet’s confidant; through Horatio, we knew that Hamlet was going to pretend to be crazy, and so forth. Without a Horatio in Haider, Haider’s sanity comes under question and the morality of the different situations in the film becomes more ambiguous. One interpretation is that the filmmaker intended for the viewers to be Horatio – for the viewers, equipped with the prior knowledge of the story of Hamlet, to use their own judgments and moral compass to form opinions about each scene and also share the story with others.

Finally, at the very end, there is no Fortinbras who marches into Haider and restores physical order. Part of this is most likely due to the logistics of the Kashmir conflict, as there is no equivalent to Fortinbras in Kashmir and the deaths of Haider’s family and friends were not at the same magnitude as the deaths of the entire royal family of Denmark. But the lack of Fortinbras again meant that Haider lacked a neat resolution.

All of the thematic and plot differences in the ending contribute to Haider’s having a lot of loose ends. Many things that were resolved in Hamlet, like Hamlet reconciling with Laertes, Hamlet killing Claudius, and Hamlet dying were not present at Haider’s ending, and the ending left viewers in the dark about the future of the characters as well as the future of Kashmir. This is truly reflective of the context that this film adaptation was placed in – we are somewhat uncertain about the future of Kashmir, and the conflict is still ongoing as this film is being watched. While the deviations that the filmmaker made from Hamlet were quite significant, Haider was an adaptation and I think the filmmaker did a good job of utilizing his creative license, adapting the classic story to an entirely different backdrop, and ensuring that the messages he sent (regardless of whether they conflicted with Hamlet) were appropriate for the history that he portrayed.