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It's not about Shakespeare and not based on “King Lear," but fans of the Bard may find traces of both in a new Bollywood film set in modern-day India.
Amitabh Bachchan, Bollywood's biggest star, plays a reclusive stage actor in The Last Lear, one who quotes Shakespeare with relish and is making his movie debut at an old age.

Passages from some of Shakespeare's best known works are sprinkled into the film's dialogues and, in one scene, Bachchan chases a reporter out of his house for misspelling the name of Oberon, the king of the fairies in "A Midsummer Night's Dream".

"Shakespeare almost becomes a character in the film," director Rituparno Ghosh said this week.
"He acts as the divine power, and his presence in certain moments almost acts as a divine intervention."

The Last Lear, one of few Bollywood films to be made in English, opened in Indian cinemas on Friday, a year after it premiered at the Toronto film festival.

Ghosh said his film's protagonist is also similar to the ageing monarch of Shakespeare's King Lear.

"Metaphorically, the vulnerability of old age, an old man who is taken advantage of, is represented in the film," he said.

For Bachchan, the role of Harry and the way he used Shakespeare's language to illustrate his points brought back memories of his own early acting days.

"I have enjoyed so many of his (Shakespeare's) plays, it's difficult to say which one is my favourite," he told a news conference this week.

There were doubts about the film's release for a while as Maharashtra Navnirman Sena threatened to boycott Bachchan's films after his wife Jaya apparently promoted Hindi over Marathi, the city's local language.

Posters of the film were torn down and a theatre screening the film vandalised, forcing producers to cancel its premiere earlier this week.

But the party called off the boycott of Bollywood's first family after Bachchan apologised for Jaya's off-the-cuff remark, allowing The Last Lear to make it to cinemas on schedule.

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by indianexpress.com