Haider: Locked down afternoons, curfewed nights
Of everything that is true, the opposite is also true.
Every situation is ripe for melodrama.
Everyone is given to talking too much.
It's a gigantic but spectacular mess, where nothing adds up.
What's true of Vishal Bharadwaj movie is equally true of Kashmir. Never has the state found a truer troubadour. Aided by Basharat Peer's peerless screenplay, Kashmir's untellable story has finally met its match in Bharadwaj's brilliant, flawed, yet awesome rendering of Hamlet. "Hai yah hai nahin/Sawal ka jawab bhi sawal hai/Main hoon ya main nahin." To be or not to be. To stay or not to stay. Kashmir's eternal dilemma of perpetual flight.
Bharadwaj has never met a spectacle he could resist. If there are graves to be dug in the middle of an icy wasteland to Gulzar's lyrics, he will do so. If there is a song to be sung with Dadi Pudumjee's almost horrific puppets, he will do so. If there is blood to be shed and bombs to be exploded, he will let loose rivers of red. And if there are betrayals, they will be on an epic scale. Who is telling the truth? It depends on whom you speak to. The ordinary people, psychologically unable to cross their doorstep without being frisked (a heartbreaking cameo from Peer whose extraordinary book, Curfewed Night, is the inspiration for the movie)? The law enforcement agencies, including the army, enraged by the sullenness of the people they have to defend/protect/inform on? The militants, trained across the border, who are interested in only fresh sacrifice and ancient grievances? Or the Hindus, as absent as the disappeared people whose unclaimed graves dot the land? In Bharadwaj's movie, brother turns on brother, friends are ready to kill for a permanent job, a father uses his daughter as an informer to acquire a big kill, and the militants and the army watch match wits against each other. Kashmir is one of India's most policed states in the world. It is also one of its most spied upon. Everyone knows everything - phones are tapped, movements are watched, conversations are mapped for hidden meanings.
There is just a glimpse of what life was like before militancy - the son polishing his father's shoes, the father giving his boy a ten rupee note only if he would correctly recall words to a ghazal, children playing cricket, young girls learning English in school with the ubiquitous accent. (yes, yes, we get it, we Kashmiris don't know how to pronounce words ending in -ed). But all that surreal pain pales in comparison to the towering figure of Tabu. In a powerhouse performance, she is Mother Kashmir, a half widow whose husband has disappeared. Condemned to a life of waiting - first for her doctor husband who is absorbed in his work and then for her son who is sent away to Aligarh to prevent him from falling under the influence of militants - she rejects it.
She chooses life and love, even if it is twisted and taboo-shattering. There is an uncomfortable relationship with her brother-in-law and an even more disturbing relationship with her grown son, Haider (a serviceable Shahid Kapoor). Tabu's stoic rejection of the inevitability of pain is possibly the first time we have not seen a widow (or even half widow) apologising for her existence. The impact of the trouble in Kashmir on its women has not been documented enough, certainly not in as great depth on the screen. There are two kinds of suffering - the withdrawing from the world of Haider's girlfriend (Shraddha Kapoor) and the hardening of heart of Haider's mother. No one is impervious though.
The smell of surveillance in the air that was once pure and free, the silent hum of the screams of tortured young men from palaces and cinema halls from a gentler time, the rattling bones of unmarked graves, and the brusque commands of the paramilitary forces trundling through the city in armoured cars - Bharadwaj's Kashmir has all these.
And with all that the escape of Salman Khan movies, the professional promise of mainland India, the detention centres where fingernails are lost and penises are hot wired, "din per pehre/raat par tale, upar khuda/neeche fauj". Richly textured, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Soaked in grief, sometimes unbearably so. Alive with rage and yet imbued with love, this is a movie that disturbs, distresses and drains you.
Watch it and weep.