Destiny has two ways of crushing us - by refusing our wishes and by fulfilling them.....
Henri Frederic AmielAnyone who has lived long enough knows what it is to
get crushed
by the fulfillment of your own desires. You pray for something that looks impossible, your prayers get answered and there you are ? you live with your fulfilled dream unhappily ever after. Ever thought that life may be more fulfilling and blissful if some of our prayers are not answered ?
These were the thoughts in my mind as I watched Maqbool realizing his dreams and then zooming into tragedy, like a shooting star - embracing darkness forever...
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Some nights ago, when I became tired of re-reading and re-reading books, I switched on the television and hunted for a good movie to lift my spirits.
The choices were limited - it was either the popcorn entertainer, Ishq Vishk or the dark and brooding, Maqbool. I tried to watch Ishq Vishk for a while, but the fact remains that I am thirty up and not twenty up - so the
ishq vishk, love vove, chocolate vocolate and romance vomance started getting on my nerves and I settled on ?Maqbool? finally.
And remained engrossed, gripped, occupied, immersed in it for the next three hours ? without blinking.
Maqbool is not just a movie ?
it’s an experience. A shuddering, somber, deep, dark experience. If entertainment is what you are after, skip it. If box office collections are what motivate you, switch the channel. But all the rest of you guys who wish to watch a really well crafted, well executed, amazingly beautiful movie, follow me. We go this way :
’Maqbool’ has been directed by
Vishal Bhardwaj, the same music composer who gave us those fantastic songs of ’Maachis’ but his musical star sank soon after and he reinvented himself as a director - and what a director he is ! Every scene is a masterpiece ! Every performance is worth applauding !
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Story The story has been inspired by the Shakespearean play ’Macbeth’. It retains the true essence of that play while adapting it to the present day scenario, where there is Pankaj Kapoor as an underworld don (the godfather like king, Abbaji), Tabu as his mistress (the queen, Nimmi) and Irfan Khan as his trusted son-like protégé, Maqbool. Interestingly, you also have the oracle-like witches, who have been incarnated as two policemen, Naseer and Om Puri, who predict the doom and watch the show along with you and act as the ’sutradhars’of this complicated story.
Nimmi falls in love with Maqbool and convinces him to eliminate his mentor, Abbaji and become his successor (Much like Macbeth’s wife influences Macbeth to kill his own father). The perfect murder is executed. Maqbool is the new head honcho of the gang. Nimmi is pregnant with their baby.
However, happiness and peace spiral away in oblivion as the complicated web of treason and guilt ultimately grips them both and lead to their doom and towards the end of a glorious chapter in the protagonists’ lives.
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PerformancesThis is
Irfan Khan?s show all the way ? that guy?s performance is par excellence. In the first half, he is required to look macho and unfeeling, dry as a wood. Yet, watch him falling in love, somewhat against his wishes, with the fetching, feminine, Nimmi. Look out for the scenes where his loyalty for Abbaji is fighting against the love for Nimmi. Watch his torment written clearly in his anguished eyes.
Tabu, is of course, brilliant, amazing, superb and ???.now I am running out of superlatives. She is so good that one forgets that there is a ?Tabu? ? all you?ll remember her as Nimmi- beautiful and vulnerable in the first half, guilt-ridden and disillusioned in the second.
I suppose it suffices to say that this challenging role with interesting shades of grey could have been done only by Tabu. Used by Abbaji and loved by Maqbool, she makes a desperate bid for search of her own identity, freedom and happiness only to realize that the decisions of fate cannot be forced on destiny.
Pankaj Kapoor as the fatherly, portly godfather is awesome. His mere presence is enough as he walks around with an aura of power. He looks very much in control ? street smart, dignified, gallant and awe-inspiring. The shocked and betrayed expression on his face when he realizes that he has been shot by his most trusted Maqbool is spot on. Though he appeared to be very laid back in the initial part (very much like a lazy lion), yet, interestingly, the gang disintegrates rapidly with his elimination.
Naseeruddin Shah and
Om Puri are hilarious in their comic roles as slightly scatter-brained policemen who are interested onlookers of the whole saga and yet, you get this uncanny feeling that they are the wisest of them all.
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I felt that?.This movie is
not for the faint-hearted. The cool, detached cruelty with which the murders are executed in this movie made me sit up and shudder involuntarily. Of course, I found the chemistry between Maqbool and Nimmi really very beautiful, though of course, it was the cause of everyone?s doom in the end - even their own.
The message in the end is very simple : We cannot escape our karma. We reap what we sow.
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At the end of the movie, when all the bloodshed, catastrophe, tragedy and calamity have been spent with, what stays with you is the image of Nimmi showing her mehndi to Maqbool as he smiles tenderly and bends to see her hands - in happier days.
It hurts? just to remember.