Most Bollywood filmmakers don't get that a movie's backdrop is a living, breathing part of the story itself - that, for a film to be truly complete, the backdrop must have as malleable and dynamic a personality as any character. Vishal Bhardwaj, however, is not most filmmakers, and thus you have Haider, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet set in the politically volatile Kashmir of the 1990s, a setting that seems tailor-made for the rebirth of this immortal tale.
The rebirth goes thus. The year is 1995. Haider (Shahid Kapoor) has just returned to Kashmir from his university in....