20 years of Maqbool: Even Shakespeare would smile indulgently at the artistic liberties Vishal Bhardwaj took with the original text

By Subhash K. Jha -

January 31, 2024 - 11:46 AM IST

From Vishal Bhardwaj’s Shakespearean trilogy Maqbool (based on Macbeth), Omkara (Othello) and Haider (Hamlet), Maqbool is the rawest, most honest and untarnished adaptation. The film completed 20 years yesterday on January 30.

20 years of Maqbool: Even Shakespeare would smile indulgently at the artistic liberties Vishal Bhardwaj took with the original text

Maqbool transports us to a threshold of pain and redemption hitherto unknown to Hindi cinema. Because this is Shakespeare’s Macbeth trans-located to Mumbai’s underworld, and because Bhardwaj has selected a dream cast to portray his nightmarish world of crime and retribution, Maqbool takes its emotional content beyond any other film from the genre.

The writing on the wall is so clear, coherent and redemptive, even Shakespeare would smile indulgently at the artistic liberties Bhardwaj has taken with the original text. Maqbool opens a whole new universe of passion-play, unexplored in the original text. Bhardwaj reveals the politics of lust and passion with a sure handedness seldom witnessed in Hindi cinema.

Hence the King from Shakespeare becomes a doddering paunchy underworld kingpin Abbaji (Pankaj Kapoor) whose ethereal Lady Macbeth is Nimmi (Tabu) whose passion for Abbaji’s most trusted lieutenant Maqbool (Irrfan Khan) rips her life womb and conscience apart.

Tabu’s Nimmi in some twisted way, reminded me of a long-forgotten film, B.R. Ishaara’s Log Kya Kahenge that her aunt Shabana Azmi had done many years ago. I haven’t forgotten the demoniacal look on Shabana’s face as she instigated her lover to murder her stepson. That stricken look returns in the fabulous form of Tabu as she provokes Irfan to get rid of her spouse who sprinkles sterility into her life and womb. Even in her most horrific moment of self-seeking, Tabu preserves the poetry of violence in her performance.

Every actor builds a poetic life for his character and then plunges his own personality in the lucid lyrical angst of lives on the edge. The characters don’t kill time scampering through crowded narrow gullies with ghodas (guns) in their hands. Most often, they are confined to meticulously created locations where they don’t appear to have been airdropped just minutes before the camera rolled.

Hemant Chaturvedi’s cinematography, particularly in the scenes capturing the dark guilt and inescapable atonement of the murderous lovers, is beyond anything imaginable in terms of cinematic expressiveness.

Comparing Maqbool to Company is akin to comparing the voices of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. Each has its own raison d’etre and rhythm. Though Irrfan’s character’s reverent regard for his mentor reminds us of Al Pacino with Marlon Brando in The Godfather, Bharadwaj’s take on the tormented destiny of the underworld is uniquely autonomous. The director packs in an astonishing density and some tongue-in-cheek barbs at Bollywood’s notorious links with the underworld. This film requires and commands very close viewing.

There are invisible driving forces guiding the characters to their final nemesis.

The screenplay constructs a pyramid of pain with a cyclic inevitability. We know these outlaws are doomed. But their journey to their imminent ruination still sucks us in. The structuring whereby two sets of love stories between Nimmi and Maqbool and Abbaji’s innocent daughter Sameera (Masumi Makhija) and Guddu (Ajay Gehi) is an ingenious method of projecting the two aspects of love, the murky and the unviolated. When in the stunning finale the dying Nimmi asks Maqbool, “Was our love pure?” we’re looking at the underbelly of passion through an epic top shot lens where crime is simultaneously subjective and objective

The performances do the rest. Irrfan Khan again dons the tormented conscience-stricken protagonist’s mantle. Irrfan’s Maqbool goes from stern self-denial to tortured crime and retribution. It’s probably one of the best parts written in Hindi cinema for a leading man. Irrfan clutches at his character’s throat and makes it articulate even its most inaudible emotions.

It is very hard to imagine to believe Vishal Bhardwaj actually went to Akshay Kumar for the part before zeroing in on Irrfan, who could never get over the tragic irony (of Shakespearean dimensions) of being considered a non-mainstream actor all his life.

Pankaj Kapoor is a revelation. His expressions of steely revenge melt into displays of utter compassion for his enchanting wife. Kapoor corroborates Bollywood’s myopic disregard for its truly outstanding performers. Maqbool takes frightful risks with narrative devices and audiences’ tastes and comes out in triumphant colours of dark despair. The spirit of joylessness is celebrated in a language that’s poetic and pristine, hence, ironically, seemingly inapplicable to such soiled lives.

Maqbool has aged better than Bhardwaj's two other Shakespearean tragedies. And the actors have a lot to do with accentuating the adaptation at just the right places.