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http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/ ... 52,00.html
Lights! Sound! Fury!
Bollywood turns Macbeth into Maqbool , a stylish and menacing tale of a murderous mobster
BY ALEX PERRY | NEW DELHI
Monday, Feb. 16, 2004
From the earliest days of moving pictures, directors have been obsessed with bringing William Shakespeare's Macbeth to the screen. Orson Welles played the tragic king among Stonehenge-like ruins. Akira Kurosawa's murderous medieval lord went down in the most furious fusillade of arrows ever filmed. Roman Polanski, funded by Playboy Productions, filmed Lady Macbeth sleepwalking in the nude.
Now it's Bollywood's turn. In director Vishal Bhardwaj's Maqbool, Macbeth has been turned into a Bombay Mob hit man tempted to kill his sadistic don for the don's disloyal mistress—the incarnation of Lady Macbeth. It may be possible to imagine three cackling witches in India's teeming megalopolis, but Bhardwaj chooses to replace them with a pair of corrupt, soothsaying cops who get their jollies playing all sides in the bloody gangland rivalries.
Bhardwaj's extraordinary adaptation works because the themes of ambition and contrition, politicking and deception fit seamlessly into modern Indian life. "You can place this story anywhere," Bhardwaj says, "in the army, in a bank, in journalism. It's a vicious, furious, bleak story. It's human." But Bhardwaj chose not a bank or newsroom but the Muslim underworld, and that imbues the film with urban slickness and the knife-edge insecurity of dog-eat-dog violence.
Maqbool is the best evidence yet that fresh blood is pumping vigorously in Bollywood: Bhardwaj has but one feature film to his directorial credit, Makdee, a children's movie about a witch who can turn people into animals. Rather than Bollywood's customary priority of abs, busts and nifty dance steps, he deliberately chose actors with theatrical training for the Macbeth retake. Irrfan Khan plays the violent but vulnerable Maqbool, a killer ultimately consumed by his conscience, and it's a performance that fulfills the promise Khan demonstrated in 2001's The Warrior. Pankaj Kapoor as the paunchy Mafia don borrows heavily (and successfully) from Marlon Brando and Al Pacino. Bollywood grandees Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah play the clairvoyant cops; both are equally known these days for their roles in other fusion Indian films, such as Monsoon Wedding and Bombay Boys (Shah) and East is East and The Mystic Masseur (Puri).
India's commercial-film factories have a creaky tradition of taking the premises of Hollywood blockbusters—Ghost, Reservoir Dogs and Species—and twisting them into virtually interchangeable, all-singing-all-dancing musicals. In the past, Shakespeare might have been just another vein of material. But in Maqbool, Bhardwaj has jettisoned Bollywood conventions to make a film that has claustrophobia, menace, drama, a fresh romantic twist and that rarest of Bollywood accomplishments, genuine tragedy.
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The Thane of Bombay
TIME talks to Irrfan Khan, the star of Maqbool
An alumnus of the stage, 38-year-old actor Irrfan Khan establishes his big-screen credentials with his star turn as the title character in Maqbool. Khan spoke to TIME's South Asia bureau chief, Alex Perry.
TIME: Maqbool is new territory for Bollywood, isn't it?
Khan: This is new, yes. Usually in Bollywood we just film dialogue, which is not really exploring film as a medium. But I'm lucky to be part of a period in which a new generation is coming up with fresh ideas and I get to do things that interest me.
TIME: Somehow I can't picture you doing song-and-dance routines.
Khan: When I first started in film, I did that fluffy stuff. But I never really enjoyed it.
TIME: Was it daunting playing an Indian Macbeth?
Khan: Actually, I didn't read the play for the role. I know it. But I wanted to approach the script as a separate piece of work.
TIME: If you're going to do something different, this is the cast for it.
Khan: (Laughs.) They're saying it's the World Cup of acting. It's the Kumbh Mela [India's biggest religious festival] with a sadhu [wise man] in every tent.
TIME: What sort of reaction have you had outside India?
Khan: In Toronto, people didn't clap at the end, and we were saying, "Something's wrong; we've done something really bad." But then we realized the effect the film has on people. They love it—I know people who've seen it three times in three days—but it seems like they can't talk about it for a while. Weird.
TIME: Currently, there seems to be some serious international interest in Bollywood.
Khan: Definitely. India is "in" right now, just like Chinese film was two or three years ago. It's the right time to make our mark.
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I was at that screening, and there was definitely applause. It wasn't thunderous (because the theatre was only half full) but there was lots of applause, after the film and especially after the Q&A. The audience loved it; there were so many questions and an overall high enthusiasm. I can't wait to see it again, but for some reason, there's hasn't been a North American release despite the fact that Yash Raj films is the distributor.
