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In a Shakespearean tragedy, one cannot but get sucked into the emotional cauldron. Be it Othello or King Lear or Macbeth or Hamlet, its all about great emotional upheaval when it comes to the core of the Bard’s plays. In Rituparno Ghosh’s The Last Lear, Amitabh Bachchan’s (as well as most of the cast’s) first full-fledged English role, Harish ‘Harry’ Mishra too is a character full of Shakespearean pathos. Quite naturally, it is but natural to expect that Harry’s character would draw you in with its raw emotional power.

Strangely, it does not happen, except in sporadic scenes. It is hard to say who is at fault – Bachchan or the script. Bachchan gives a performance that is one of his best, but even though there have been raving reports about this being his best-ever performance, there is actually nothing much that takes forward his histrionics from the point where he …