Maqbool (2003) by Vishal Bharadwaj, a modern day reinterpretation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, is based in the backdrop of Mumbai’s mafia kings and is a dark and very close retelling of the original text.
The principal characters are played by Irfan Khan, Tabu, Pankaj Kapur, Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah. While Bharadwaj has more or less retained the narrative of the original play, he does move around the settings of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Pankaj Kapur (Abbaji - Duncan) is the reigning don of Mumbai’s underworld and Tabu (Nimmi - Lady Macbeth) is his mistress who loves Kapur’s right hand man Irfan Khan (Maqbool - Macbeth). Bharadwaj has intelligently adapted the characters of the play to suit his characters and the time in which it is set by replacing the three witches or soothsayer’s of the original by two corrupt policemen with a knack for astrology, played by Om Puri (Inspector Pandit) and Naseeruddin Shah (Inspector Purohit).
Macbeth, a story about personal ambition, has strong themes of violence, political turmoil and guilt. These ideas are maintained by Bharadwaj to a great extent; however the change in the characterisation of Macbeth and his Lady ensures that the overwhelming theme in the movie is also love/passion. Shakespeare’s Macbeth kills Duncan purely out of ambition; Maqbool’s motivations go beyond those of being the don. Maqbool out of love for Nimmi as well as the hearsay that Abbaji may not be as good as Maqbool originally thinks he is, leads to a scared yet determined Maqbool to end Abbaji’s life.
The policemen too, unlike Shakespeare’s witches, have an active role to play in the movie. They time and again keep intervening to “maintain balance of power” as they call it, by instigating Maqbool, letting go of Boti (Macduff) so that he may join Guddu (Fleance) and by predicting everyone’s fate time and again irrespective of their wanting to know it. Apart from the original set of predictions made by the witches, both Pandit and Purohit make additional ones about Abbaji’s daughter, who is set to marry Guddu. The last prediction that the witches make about the ‘forest entering the castle’, is re-interpreted by Bharadwaj to suit the situation where Maqbool is wanted by customs officials, by predicting that Maqbool would die when the ‘dariya (river/creek)enters the house’. This prediction comes true when the Coast Guard officials enter Maqbool’s house in order to arrest him.
Bharadwaj tries to create a convincing world of Mumbai’s dark underbelly, where people are killed routinely, but the idea of moral acts and loyalty is much appreciated. Hence, Maqbool’s guilt not only has to do with the murder of Abbaji, but also the fact that his loyalty to Abbaji transcended the bond between a don and his goons – Maqbool treated Abbaji with respect that a father is given.
Here too, Bharadwaj suitably modifies his plot by showing us the extent of Maqbool’s guilt, whose hallucinations are much more frequent and de-settling than that of Nimmi’s. The strongest imagery of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is that of his Lady washing her hands over and over again when she believes that they still have blood over them, as a physical manifestation of her guilt in being party to Duncan’s murder. Bharadwaj chooses to do away with this crucial point and since Nimmi was in bed with Abbaji when he dies, the blood smears are imagined by her to be on her face and subsequently on the walls of Maqbool’s house.
Since the use of music is possible in its screen adaptation, Bharadwaj makes sure that the background score is foreboding and its use in crucial scenes (deaths of Abbaji, Maqbool and Nimmi), foretells the fate of the characters to the audience. The use of very local instruments such as the dhol, tasha and the tolling of the bells precedes all violent scenes and at every point that the movie takes a turn in the plot, a high pitched male voice is heard.
Bharadwaj also makes good use of songs to take the narrative forward, rather than the usual break in reality that is used in Hindi movies. Songs such as Ru-Ba-Ru that confirms Maqbool’s suspicion of Guddu’s love interest in Sameera (Abbaji’s daughter) and “Rone do” establishes the physical proximity of Nimmi and Maqbool’s relationship and acts as a precursor to his making up his to kill Abbaji.
Bharadwaj makes ample use of all the cinematic liberty he attains by adapting the story into his plot by juxtaposing the extent of madness, guilt and despair in Maqbool and Nimmi in the final scenes when the camera focuses on Irfan Khan, but in the mirror behind him, we see Tabu washing the walls in a hopeless attempt to ‘get the blood off them’, which is Bharadwaj’s interpretation of Lady Macbeth’s washing of her hands.
The fact that Bharadwaj intends the movie to be one of unstable leadership and abject violence is clear in the ease with which he treats the scenes where Abbaji offers a pan to a politician and the effortless display of bullet marks that Abbaji flaunts on the body of his bodyguard who is eventually accused of murdering Abbaji.
However, the overwhelming idea is that Bharadwaj also deals with the wobbly relationship between Nimmi and Maqbool, the latter who has conflicting interests of love and loyalty. What he will eventually choose is clear to even the uninitiated audience much before the character himself. Bharadwaj uses a long shot of Maqbool and Nimmi in each other’s arms while standing on rocks at the edge of the sea; it is here that Bharadwaj’s Macbeth seals his destiny without even being conscious about his decision.
The visual detailing and the intrinsic understanding of the world that Bharadwaj places his characters in, the due attention to give it the dark premonition of sinister events and his equal emphasis on costumes, locations and the stress on the story that he is telling, makes Maqbool a good adaptation of Macbeth while preserving its individual standing as a movie that recounts the story of doomed love surrounded by guilt, violence and ruthless ambition.