"Is this the Noble Moor?"

Re-viewing Othello on Screen through "Indian" (and Indian) Eyes

Abstract

Relatively recent derivatives of Othello filmed in Britain and the USA, Othello (dir. Geoffrey Sax, 2001), and O (dir. Tim Blake Nelson, 2001) have re-fashioned the play into contemporary scenarios stressing economic, racial, and gender — political — issues that characterize the multicultural social fabrics in hegemonic countries. Needless to say, such strategies render Lodovico's question near the end of act 4, scene 1 — "Is this the noble Moor whom our full senate / Call all-in-all sufficient?" (Othello, 4.1.261-62) — more pressing by at once specifying and amplifying the societal and ethnic implications of the terms "noble" and "Moor" in the twenty-first century. This essay examines two other recent films based on Shakespeare's Othello that employ adaptative approaches to foreground similar issues: the nearly unnoticed Mexican production Huapango (dir. Iván Lipkies, 2003), and to a lesser degree, the critically successful Indian film Omkara (dir. Vishal Bhardwaj, 2006). In contrast with the films mentioned above, these pictures were made in developing nations with distinct social and cultural profiles, where the aforementioned economic, racial and gender matters take, or demand to take, forms of their own for significant local appropriation. Among the topics to be explored and illustrated in this essay are the contrasting, yet (socio)logically comparable scenarios wherein the screenwriters re-set Shakespeare's tragedy, which again feature issues that are as much shared as culture-specific — in particular, the issue of violence, both criminal and domestic.