By Gautaman BhaskaranWilliam Shakespeare wrote plays which travelled through time and territory with supreme ease. The stories have been not only staged a billion times during and after his life in the 16-17th century, but also translated into hundreds of languages. And what is more, they have been adapted on screen in a bewildering variety of ways. I would be doing cinema director Vishal Bharadwaj a great disservice if I were not to mention two of his excellent adaptations of Shakespearean dramas. His 2003 Maqbool with Irrfan Khan, Pankaj Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and Tabu recreated Macbeth, setting it in the seedy streets of Mumbai’s underworld. Khan became an A-lister after his role as a gangster torn between his loyalty to his master and love for the man’s wife. Three years later, Bharadwaj returned with another adaptation of the Bard’s play, Othello. The director called it Omkara, and whisked the plot from the lagoons of Venice to the badlands of central India. With actors Ajay Devgn, Saif Ali Khan, Naseeruddin Shah and Kareena Kapoor, the helmer wove his narrative through violent politics, deceit, love and jealousy. Shakespeare’s Moor of Venice was transformed into a ruthless political fixer, a man who, like Othello was consumed by passion as he was, in in the end, by suspicion – leading to one of the most heartrending tragedies in literature. Omkara helped me discover the actor in Saif Ali Khan. A man who had hitherto portrayed no great characters came out with an excellent piece of acting. As the wile Iago – nay Ishwar “Langda” Tyagi – he drove the wedge between Omkara and his wife, Dolly (playing Desdemona of the original). A waistlet replaced the handkerchief in Omkara, spinning a web of vicious wariness and ferocious fury. It is against Bharadwaj’s magnificent Shakespearean canvas that Manish Tewari attempts to create Verona in Varanasi with his tale of doomed love, Issaq, a version of the great Romeo and Juliet. One of the most, most popular works of the Bard of Avon, Romeo and Juliet takes us through the foolish temper tantrums and egoistic attitudes of two large feuding families, whose members cannot set sight on each other without thirsting for murder and blood.Shakespeare’s Capulets become Kashyaps, and Montagues, Mishras. Romeo is Rahul (Prateik Babbar) and Juliet is Bachchi (Amyra Dastur). And swords turn into guns in Tewari’s drama, which otherwise looks like a circus ring with levitating holy men high on drugs, thugs forever drunk and cussing, and a police officer who turns from a mouse to a mugger in his lust for Bachchi. The head of the Kashyap clan resembles a buffoon, and Rahul does not need a ladder to get into Bachchi’s bedroom. He swings from wall to wall, hops across barriers, jumps and summersaults much like a seasoned trapeze artist. If the whole show does not already look like an absurd comedy — and mind you, we are looking at one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies of star-crossed lovers — Tewari makes his work into a still bigger farce by introducing into his narrative a band of Naxalites or Maoists. Their chief is called Madrasi, and his men while shouting “Lal Salaam” steal sand, are willing to be bought over by the cop and in the most serious of situations, they try desperately to look stern. But fail. To crown all this, we have a clown of a Minister, who wears a wig to hide his bald pate and struts about like a true caricature!As one Firstpost reviewer quipped and rightly too: “So here’s what we know about the Benares in which director Manish Tewari sets Issaq. There are more staircases in the city than there are mosquitoes in Kolkata. Its men spit compulsively and everywhere. Wiry old sadhus have elaborate chemistry labs with test tubes, beakers and flasks in their backyards. These sadhus can outdo Pooja Bedi with their sex-life advice, and they levitate with the same ease with which an average Indian man burps. Benares is also under grave threat from the Maoists who, being as imaginative as the movie’s director, aren’t so pedestrian as to behave like real-life Maoists; they smuggle sand.”Rahul and Bachchi have to sprint across all these mad men to meet, to profess love, while her evil uncle (played with great excellence by Ravi Kishan) and youngish stepmother are having a roaring illicit affair. Rahul and Bachchi then get secretly married, but in the meantime, he is being hunted down by her family and the police for having killed the uncle on the banks of the holy Ganges. Most of us know what happens to the lovers, but Tewari’s path to the tragic finale through Varanasi’s alleyways and ghats is paved with sheer idiocy. And Shakespeare must be tossing about in his grave! Ray in Venice Two of Satyajit Ray’s classics will be screened at the 70th edition of the world’s oldest film festival in Venice opening on August 28. The much sought-after section, Venezia Classics, will include the Indian master’s Mahapurush (The Holy Man) and Kapurush (The Coward). Both movies will be screened in their digitally restored versions.I have seen some of the restored editions of Ray’s masterpieces like Pather Panchali (The Song of the Little Road) and Charulata (The Lonely Wife) at Cannes. Also Mrinal Sen’s Khandar (The Ruins). All these sparkle as if they have just popped out of the lab, and what a delight they are to watch!Venezia Classics is a section that the Festival introduced in 2012 and is devoted to restored features and documentaries. It comprises a choice of the finest classic film restorations – the rediscovery of neglected or underrated movies of the past – completed over the past year by cinema libraries, cultural institutions or production companies the world over.Sorcerer (1977), the masterpiece by the Golden Lion winner for lifetime achievement, William Friedkin, will open this year’s Venezia Classics. Warner Brothers has restored the film for the special occasion. Sorcerer is a gripping tale of outcasts working in a South American oil drill who are forced to choose between freedom and slavery, but the path to an unshackled life is dangerously dynamited. Coming back to Ray, it is not just Venice but even Britain which will celebrate one of the greatest auteurs the world has ever known. The British Film Institute will release a superbly restored version of Ray’s Mahanagar (The Big City) to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie. “Satyajit Ray’s wonderfully enjoyable portrait of mid-1950s Calcutta, a society still adjusting to Independence, infuses warmth, wit and genuine insight into its large, multi-generational cast of characters, including Arati’s conservative old father-in-law, her studious teenage sister-in-law, and her benevolently despotic boss,” says Margaret Deriaz of the BFI. She adds: “The Big City, with its emphasis on conflicting social values – and most particularly on the role of women – feels as fresh and relevant as ever.” Mahanagar won Ray a Silver Bear for Best Direction at the Berlin Film Festival in 1964. It features Madhabi Mukherjee and Anil Chatterjee in lead roles.* Gautaman Bhaskaran, who has covered the Venice Film Festival for about 15 years, will return to the 11-day event on the Lido this August/September, and he may be e-mailed at gautamanb@hotmail.com