Omkara (2006)

Directed by: Vishal Bharadwaj | 150 minutes | action, drama, romance, musical | Actors: Ajay Devgan, Saif Ali Khan, Kareena Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma, Naseeruddin Shah, Vivek Oberoi, Bipasha Basu, Deepak Dobriyal, Manav Kaushik, Kamal Tiwari

There is no denying that these people know how to film. It looks great, good camera work, nice cinema. The entire cast is well acted. The music is well balanced, not too much. Worth mentioning: director Vishal Bharadwaj is also responsible for the screenplay and music; he even sang one of the songs.

The story of ‘Omkara’ is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘Othello’, but then moved to India, present tense. The classic tale of the poison of jealousy, which spreads effectively and relentlessly through mind and body, eventually blinding all the senses with hatred, works and is nicely told (2.5 hours anyway!). Bit confusing at first, who is who and does what and why?

‘Omkara’ is a so-called Bollywood movie. Bollywood is a combination of the words ‘Bombay’ (the center of the Indian film industry) and ‘Hollywood’. The Indian film industry is said to be at least as big as, if not bigger than, the American one and the parallels are obvious: every Bollywood film is made to make a ton of money by reaching as large an audience as possible. And that audience wants value for money. In India, without exception, that means song, dance and spectacle in every film. The themes should be big, melodramatic; parents who abandon their children, crooks with a golden heart, unattainable loves, dramatic reunions, misunderstandings that lead to murder and mayhem. Actually not much different from what most people here want to see in film (and on television). Only, for the time being, people in India seem to refuse to deviate even a millimeter from the existing formulas. Singing and dancing must therefore really be included, which is why Bollywood films are often referred to as ‘musicals’. Not that the protagonists in ‘Omkara’ start singing, on the contrary. There are about four full songs in the film, which sound nice, beautifully sung too, but certainly not by the players. The dialogues disappear for a while, there is dancing, usually in a bar or on a dance floor, so that’s not too bad. The images suddenly function as a video clip for four minutes. That takes some getting used to, but it hardly bothers.