An Analysis of
Adaptational Changes in the Characters of Bhardwaj’s Maqbool
Sundaram Singh,
Ph.D. Research Scholar,
University Deptt. of
English,
B. R.A.B.U., Muzaffarpur,
Bihar, India,
&
Dr. Madhu Shalini,
Professor,
University Deptt. of English,
B.R.A.B.U., Muzaffarpur,
Bihar, India.
Abstract:
Attempting a paper on this topic is walking a thin line
between two focal points of Adaptation Studies— Adaptation and Appropriation.
For, if we go by the definitions of both the terms, Maqbool (2003), at
first, seems to be a simple adaptation, as the filmmaker clearly mentions its
relationship with the source text. But if we observe the film closely, it
appears to be an appropriation because the source text has been morphed
completely into a new cultural product. Hailed by critics and failing at the
box-office, the film still gets discussed from time to time. But has it
inherited the permanence and universality from its parent-text, Macbeth—
“that is the question”?
The paper shall compare and analyse Shakespeare’s Macbeth
and Bhardwaj’s Maqbool applying chiefly, the theory of
appropriation, propounded by Julie Sanders. It shall dissect the cinematic
transposition and study the spatiotemporal as well as cultural changes that are
made in order to establish the film smoothly into the local context. Furthermore,
the paper shall also try to ascertain whether Bhardwaj’s ‘adaptation’ can be
considered a success or not. While dealing with the said subject, the paper
shall also touch upon the theories of adaptation given by Geoffrey Wagner and
Deborah Cartmell.
Keywords:
Adaptation, Appropriation, Proximation, Context, Culture, Transposition,
Analogy
1.
Introduction:
“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning
alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation
to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone, you must set him,
for contrast and comparison, among the dead,” (38) claims T.S. Eliot. And here
is an artist, named William Shakespeare whose influence permeates even those
works, whose artists do not realize that unknowingly they are indebted to
Shakespeare. But was the Bard himself original through and through? Of course,
not! He can be regarded as one of the most acceptable and efficient plagiarist.
Almost all of his plays are nothing but modified forms of some earlier works of
literature and history. Shakespeare’s greatness lies in the way he edited as
well as added to the already existing stories, and made them his own with the
sheer power of his genius and craftsmanship. He lent permanence to his dramas,
that even today, authors and artists of various genres look towards the
four-century old master and search his corpus, for inspiration.
The play that concerns this paper is Macbeth,
ingeniously derived from Holinshed’s Chronicles. Notwithstanding that Macbeth itself is an adaptation, the
play surpasses its source-text’s relevance and universality. Since its first performance around 1606, Macbeth has been adapted into, as
well as served as the basis of, a variety of literary and artistic products.
Due to the advent of English Studies in India owing to colonialism, Indian
folks discovered Shakespeare. And especially, after Independence, with the
development of Indian cinema, the interest, albeit slowly, in adapting
Shakespeare on screen increased manifold. However, there were few instances of
Shakespeare adaptation before Independence also such as— Khoon Ka Khoon (1935),
an adaptation of Hamlet, directed by Sohrab Modi and Zalim Saudagar (1941),
adapted from The Merchant of Venice, directed by J.J. Madan.
Post Independence a new gust of adaptation swept over the
Indian subcontinent. Regional film industries along with the most dominant film
industry, i.e. the Hindi film industry started exploring, adapting and at
times, appropriating Shakespeare according to their local and social context.
Consequently emerged works such as Bhranti Bilas (1963), which is based
on a 1869 play, with the same name, by Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, which itself
is based on The Comedy of Errors; followed by Do Dooni Chaar (1968),
which is based on the former and is written by Gulzar. Again in 1982, Gulzar
revised and remade Do Dooni Chaar, and this time directed also the film,
presenting it with a new title: Angoor. Since then The Comedy of
Errors has been adapted several times into Indian movies. Indian filmmakers
not only interpreted Shakespearean comedies in their unique way but also saw
the opportunity in the Bard’s famous tragedies, especially Romeo and Juliet,
Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth. Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988),
Ishakzaade (2012), Goliyon Ki Rasleela, Ram Leela (2013),
etc. are based on Romeo and Juliet but the makers have never made the
relationship with their source-text public, and here of course ‘appropriation’
comes into the picture, which the paper shall elaborate on in the ensuing
paragraphs. Othello was transposed into a 1997 Malayalam film named Kaliyattamand
also into a 2006 Hindi movie entitled Omkara (Bhardwaj’s second
Shakespeare adaptation). Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014) and Hemanta (2016),
a Bengali movie directed by Anjan Dutt are the modern-day adaptations of Hamlet.
In 2003, Vishal Bhardwaj made Maqbool, which he
claims to be “based on William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.” Like Bhardwaj’s
other two adaptations, Maqbool has been set into an essentially Indian
context. Not only that, the movie also follows the theme that has been one of
the most prominent themes in filmmaking in India and abroad, of crime and
underworld. The story is woven around the Mumbai Underworld, whose chieftain,
before Maqbool’s (Irrfan Khan) accession, is Jehangir Khan alias Abba Ji
(Pankaj Kapur). Maqbool, in the beginning, works as the right-hand man and then
afterwards at the encouragement of his beloved Nimmi (Tabu), who is the
mistress of Abba Ji, assassinates Abba Ji and assumes his position, thereupon.
It can be observed by now that the story, the plot and
other elements of Macbeth has completely been morphed into a new
cultural product, which has a very different context. The spatiotemporal
effects too are evident. Macbeth, purely an English play, is set in the
era before sixteenth century, in Scotland and England; and those were the days
of Monarchy and sword-fighting. While Maqbool, a Hindi feature film is
set in twenty-first century India, Mumbai, to be precise, in which guns have
been used during fights, which captures the contemporary situation. So,
naturally it’s a cross-cultural journey of the former to the latter. This
shifting or rather transformation of the context leads the present proposition
to the operative term— Appropriation.
Appropriation comes under the umbrella of Adaptation.
Geoffrey Wagner in 1975 classified Adaptation into three categories, namely
transposition, commentary and analogy. Transposition is, broadly, a novel
“directly given on screen” (Wagner 222); commentary is ‘‘where an original is
taken and either purposely or inadvertently altered in some respect’’ (Wagner
223); and analogy is kind of adaptation “that shifts the action of the fiction
forward in time or otherwise changes its essential context; analogy goes further
than shifting a scene or playing with the end, and must transplant the whole
scenario so that little of the original is identifiable” (Cartmell and Whelehan
8). Subsequently, in 1999, Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan discussed and
argued for the three broad classifications of adaptation, propounded by Wagner,
in their Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text.
Appropriation is basically an extended version of
adaptation which can be likened to analogy. According to Julie Sanders:
An adaptation most often signals a relationship with an
informing source text either through its title or through more embedded
references…Building on the subcategory of adaptation categorized by Deborah
Cartmell as analogue, appropriation frequently effects a more decisive journey
away from the informing text into a wholly new cultural product and domain,
often through the actions of interpolation and critique as much as through the
movement from one genre to others. (35)
Appropriation is, generally, nothing but an extended as
well as a slightly complex version of Adaptation only.
1.1.Objectives:
i)
To ascertain the difference between
adaptation and appropriation through the instance of the selected works.
ii)
To compare and analyse Macbeth and Maqbool
critically, in general, and Lady Macbeth and Nimmi as well as the Witches
and Pandit-Purohit duo, in particular.
iii)
To assess whether Maqbool is a
successful adaptation.
2. Literature Review:
Adaptation Studies is relatively a newer field, however,
works related to it are umpteen. Since the study focuses only on the adaptation
of Macbeth into the film Maqbool, the present section includes
literatures that are relevant to the study.
Published in 2009, “What If Lady Macbeth Were Pregnant?:
Amativeness, Procreation, and Future Dynasty in Maqbool” by William C.
Ferleman, studies the remarkable deviation or transgression in the film.
According to Ferleman, it is love, especially a profane one, and not the
“vaulting ambition”, that incites Maqbool (Macbeth) and Nimmi (Lady Macbeth) to
assassinate Jehangir (Duncan). Additionally, he considers the scandalous love
affair between Maqbool and Nimmi as well as the latter’s pregnancy, thereupon,
as the key motif in the film.
In “Indigenizing Macbeth:
Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool” (2009) Suddhaseel Sen studies the
transcultural adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth into Bhardwaj’s Maqbool.
The paper revolves around the indigenisation of the Shakespearean text.
“Adaptation and Appropriation: Macbeth into Maqbool”
(2014) by Saurabh Kr. Singh talks about the overall process of adaptation and
appropriation taking the aforementioned works into account, by way of
comparison.
Ana L Magis Weinberg in “A Loving Redemption of Lady
Macbeth: Nimmi in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool” (2016), analyses the
character of both the female protagonists from a “western perspective”, stating
a disclaimer that the contextual differences might lead her towards
over-analysis and oblivious omission or even towards “misreading of certain
codes.” She, primarily, focuses on Nimmi, who seems to be a “humanised” form of
the “monstrous” Lady Macbeth, as well as studies the adaptational alterations
in the personality of the latter not only because of multiple updates in the
plot but also by the way the actress, namely Tabu, delivers her performance.
“All the King’s Men and all the King’s Women: reading
Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool as a ‘Creative Mistranslation’ of
Shakespeare’s Macbeth” (2017) authored by Subarna Mondal concentrates on
the depiction of the prevalent religious differences and conflicts in the
re-imagination Macbeth as a struggle
for supremacy and power within the organized crime in Mumbai.
In “From Text to Film: A Comparative Study Of Macbeth And
Maqbool” (2022), the authors Laxmi Rai and Dhananjay Tripathi propose
that “although Bhardwaj has made some strong references to the original text,
he has taken the liberty to modify the source text to cater to the demands of
the contemporary era” (135). Additionally, the paper analyses and compares the
settings, scenes, and characters in both the play and the film and upholds that
Shakespearean spirit pervades the film version despite being an adaptation of
the print version.
3. Research Gap:
Notwithstanding that the researchers have done more or
less a good work, some areas remain unexplored. Most of them have merely done
the comparison between the source text and the resultant product. Few have
analysed also, not something specific but the overall similarities and
differences. One of the researchers went a bit far and found something really
surprising in Maqbool, that is, the representation of the prevalent
“religiously generated animosity” in the contemporary society. But one thing is
common that they all praised Maqbool and some eulogised it also.
Finding justification for the cultural and temporal
transformation of the adapted characters remains to be studied. A clear
classification of Maqbool under adaptation or appropriation also remains
to be undertaken.
4. Nimmi, what a catastrophe!:
One of the most, if not the most, powerful, indeed
psychologically, and evil female characters, not only of the Bard but also of
the entire history of English literature has been reduced to Nimmi, a typical
Bollywood female lead, who usually stays behind their male counterparts. Lady
Macbeth, who is strong like steel, ambitious like Icarus and brutal like
herself, is turned into a meek submissive mistress and the beloved of Maqbool.
Of course she is evil, but still there is a grandeur attached to the character
of Lady Macbeth. And Nimmi has been bereft of that grandeur. She has never used
a knife nor has she killed anyone, unlike Nimmi who kills the bodyguard of
Jehangir. For instance, sometimes an unclipped cloth falls from some building,
which hardly gets noticed, but when a building falls, it makes a colossal
impact. It is the fall which has a certain magnitude that leaves some great and
enduring impact. Shakespeare’s female lead at times appears as the only
lead/protagonist in the play. Macbeth merely appears like a puppet. Whereas
Nimmi, the mistress of Jehangir Khan alias Abba Ji, pines for the reciprocation
of the amorous feelings she has for Maqbool. She even gets slapped twice by
Maqbool. The source character wants Macbeth to become the King and is purely
led by her ambition, while Nimmi who is in want of love, is led just by her
sensuous feelings.
Perhaps, the most memorable of Shakespeare’s ladies, Lady
Macbeth has also been recognised as cruel and nasty. The German philosopher,
Goethe has considered her as a super-witch in order to show her immense evil
influence on Macbeth and the play as a whole than the three prophetic witches.
Recent researchers have shown a swing in opinion as she is viewed as much more
than the “scheming vicious woman.” She is seen as a vulnerable wife and deeply
in love with her husband for whom she can go to any length, to secure his
future. Feminists see her as a nameless woman who redefines the contemporary
gender norms, whereby females were expected to be the passive followers as well
as to be filled with courtly virtues and benevolence; but the lady seems to be
grossly antithetical to these norms. Notwithstanding that she has all the
qualities with which females are generally associated, she merely represses
them in order to fulfill the dreams and ambitions of her husband; and that is
quite evident from the fact that, after the deed is done, she gradually loses
her sanity, as a result of the overwhelming guilt.
The
assassination of King Duncan at the hands of Macbeth was a result of the
latter’s “vaulting ambition” as well as of the indispensable motivation of Lady
Macbeth. But in Maqbool the motive of murder remains shrouded under
mystery. It is not clear what encourages Maqbool more— his love for Nimmi or
the fact that the patriarch, Abba Ji was keeping Nimmi as his mistress or
Maqbool’s own ambition fuelled by the replacement of the witches, Pandit and
Purohit.
The paper doesn’t approve of or condone the thought
processes of Lady Macbeth but at the same time, it, indeed, points out that the
representation of Lady Macbeth as Nimmi lacks the grandeur of the former. When,
in the play, Macbeth is wavering and also having second thoughts regarding the
assassination the Machiavellian Lady Macbeth incites him saying:
LADY MACBETH. I have given suck and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me-
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums
And dash’d the brains out had I so sworn as you
Have done to this. (Macbeth1.7.54-59)
No wonder she is considered as the fourth witch of the
play.
It is true that Maqbool is, broadly, an adaptation
and that too a cross-cultural one, i.e. both the source text and the film
belong to completely different cultures and eras. Both have been written
keeping in mind the respective contemporary tastes and trends. Hence the
context is also very different. But the issue to consider here is that
Shakespeare himself is a touchstone of craftsmanship and Macbeth is one
of his neatly etched tragedies. So, if an artist claims that he/she is keeping Macbeth
as the basis of their work, naturally, the expectation shoots up. Audience
expects the adaptation or appropriation either to raise the bars already set or
at least to be at par with the source text. If it be below the established
standards then what purpose would it serve?
Owing to the frequent allusions and references to the
source text, one cannot stop himself from comparing the film to the parent
text. The comparison begins rather involuntarily in the psyche of the
spectator, which is not an objectionable activity. But when the original
character is already of a mammoth stature and the character borne out of it is
a weakling, the experience gets ruined. The paper doesn’t vote for ‘fidelity to
the source text’, but against the idea of continuously alluding to the original
text, keeping the memory of the grandeur of the original always active, while
presenting, in its place, something mediocre and ordinary. Some adapt the
theme, some transpose the text into a different medium, some take inspiration
from the source text and create their own material, some change the context of
the original text and morph that into a new product and then come those who
keep oscillating among all of these. Maqbool falls into the last
category.
5. Pandit and Purohit: Witches replaced by clowns:
Shakespeare transformed Angels into Witches/Weird Sisters
and Bhardwaj turned them into jesters— Pandit and Purohit, played by Om Puri
and Naseeruddin Shah, respectively. This seems to work, for the duo most of the
times render comic relief. But again when their prophecies or equivocations
allude to the source text an unconscious comparison gets unleashed. In the
text, the prophecies by the Witches are— that Macbeth who was already Thane of
Glamis, would become Thane of Cawdor as well and eventually would become the
King. According to Pandit and Purohit— Maqbool shall soon get into a
relationship with some girl (he was already having a secret affair with Nimmi),
subsequently he shall get control over “Bollywood” and eventually will replace
Jehangir Khan.
Kaka (Piyush Mishra), who is Maqbool’s Banquo,
inquires about his own future from the duo, just the way it happens in the
play. And he gets a similar reply that his son would be the patriarch. The only
difference being that his son, Guddu returns back after the death of his
father, and stays on screen for most of the time, unlike Banquo’s son.
And the famous equivocal prophecy of the third
apparition, according to which Macbeth's downfall is only possible when “Birnam
Woods” would move towards “Dunsinane Hills”, where Macbeth lived. In the same
manner, Pandit and Purohit tell Maqbool that his downfall would only be possible
when “the sea would enter his abode.”
6. Conclusion:
Shakespeare himself adapted Macbeth from Holinshed’s
Chronicles (1987) but by the power of his intellect, he outshined the
material which served as its basis, while taking care of the contemporary tastes.
If one considers the present film as a standalone product then it, more or
less, seems fine. But the moment it’s considered in totality, taking into
account its source-text, it cannot be considered as a successful adaptation.
When one studies Macbeth he/she feels
the twin emotions of pity and fear, but Maqbool hardly evokes such
emotions.
However, the filmmaker clearly mentions the basis of Maqbool,
it is an appropriation, as with the help of proximation the foreign play has
been re-established into a local and synchronous context. Maqbool also
falls under the subcategory, created by Wagner, named Analogy.
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