I distinctly remember my disbelief when Shahid Kapoor’s character in Kabir Singh slapped Kiara Advani’s Preeti, and the entire theatre erupted in cheers. It was a packed evening show, and I had an article to submit that night. Instead of forming sentences for the piece, I couldn’t stop thinking about the audience’s reaction. In this day and age, they didn’t just accept but celebrated a misogynistic and abusive character. As the box office numbers soared, I couldn’t help but think: it took a film glorifying toxic masculinity and abusive behaviour for the masses to give Shahid the star status he long deserved.
The actor had already delivered career-defining performances in films like Udta Punjab, Kaminey, and Haider, but these weren’t widely appreciated by the masses. This speaks volumes about the audience’s mindset, who often mistake shock value and outrageous, obnoxious cinema for quality filmmaking. But this is by no means a critique of Kabir Singh—instead, it’s a reflection on a missed opportunity. Haider was Shahid’s defining role, the one that should have catapulted him to superstardom.
A Vishal Bhardwaj adaptation of Hamlet, set in war-torn Kashmir, Haider was a natural lens through which to view contemporary India. Shahid’s performance was nothing short of transformative. The actor submitted completely to the character, and the aftereffects of his portrayal have been so overwhelming that even a re-watch of the film is a moving experience. Despite sharing the screen with stalwarts like Tabu, Kay Kay Menon, and Irrfan Khan, Shahid held his own, an achievement he humbly described as “very intimidating and fascinating.”
Though Tabu stole the show in parts, it was Shahid who carried Vishal Bhardwaj’s story forward with unwavering earnestness. His growth as an actor reached new heights with the delivery of the film’s iconic six-page monologue. Grappling with internal conflicts of hate, love, obsession, revenge, and ambition after discovering his father’s disappearance and his mother’s affair with his uncle, Haider teeters on the edge of madness. The shock of losing his childhood home, and along with it his sense of self, pushes him to a point of indifference to societal norms. The once charming, soft-featured Haider with his smooth hair and flawless skin undergoes a stark transformation into a nomad with a shaved head and a defiant attitude. Standing at the center of the city, he expresses not only his own anguish but the suffering of Kashmiris and their existential crisis, faced with every waking moment of their lives.
Bringing to life a character’s emotional conflict is no easy task, and Shahid found it particularly difficult to convey Haider’s turmoil. Recalling the monologue scene, he told Filmfare: “I’ve done challenging roles, but this character’s mental journey was difficult to convey. One of my favorite scenes was the monologue where I’m bald. There’s a madness in Haider’s ranting.”
Another standout moment is the “Bismil” sequence, when Haider exposes his uncle (played by Kay Kay Menon) as his father’s murderer. The play-within-a-play retelling of the tragedy, combined with Shahid’s fierce eyes and body language, elevates the scene to something hair-raising. Shahid also subtly navigated Haider’s internal Oedipal conflict, veering between love, hate, and obsession for his mother. It’s a tricky dynamic, but Shahid strikes just the right balance without letting the film slip into distastefulness.
Writing about Haider has always been a monumental task because the film hits your conscience so powerfully that you fear you won’t be able to translate that intensity into words. This is a perspective of a writer in the audience. Now, imagine playing such a role on screen and justifying it. “The role makes you feel inadequate as an actor. One thing I constantly felt while doing this film was that I wasn’t good enough for the role,” Shahid Kapoor admitted. Perhaps it was this doubt that drove Shahid to deliver the performance of a lifetime—one that left me in no doubt about his greatness, mass appeal not with standing.
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