Omkara

Omkara: ***

I have never read any Shakespeare, and whatever little criminally abridged pieces that had found their way into my school’s English curriculum, have been forgotten. Yes you can read that last sentence again, gape out loud, widen your eyes and fall from your chair. But today, after watching Omkara, it really will be the second time in my life that I felt smug for missing out on a body of work that’s considered universally to be the “ultimate” in drama and literature. (the first time being, if you still are as dimwit to not guess, when I had watched Maqbool 2 years back). Just as the end-credits started to roll, I just couldn’t get this thought out of my head that if I had known the climax way before, I just wouldn’t have bothered with even writing this review. The number of freewheeling shockers jam-packed in the final ten minutes of the movie just wouldn’t have had that impact that (I am so thankful to my ignorance) they had.

But mincing no words now, I have to admit that I was disappointed with Omkara. With a plot pregnant with far far more drama than Maqbool, it simply didn’t have the intensity or the power of the latter. Save for the last ten minutes, when the rein from the bland characters finally passes on to the actual plot which helps it end on an above-average note, the film’s got mediocre written all over it. And that’s not because it settles for anything mediocre but because it always somehow manages to mix something superb with something very ghastly, and the bar, as a consequence, ends up raising only halfway.

Much of the damage for me came from the actors. In a tale that pivots on the central love story, sparks simply fail to fly even when the camera longedly follows Dolly (Kareena’s character) running after Omkara (Devgan) in that supposed-to-be-cutey-and-teasy scene or even when Devgan is furiously necking and pecking the Kapoor lass beneath the covers. When one has a storyline with beaten to death sequences of running away with one’s lover much to one’s family’s disdain, its upto the actors to rise above the banal and deliver. While Devgan does try valiantly to look lovestruck with his beady eyes, Kareena’s just so awfully controlled and held-back, she ends up looking quite uncomfortable and out-of-place. This when really all she had to do was little more than what she did in Refugee–do the simpleton act with a dash of charm.
Both the actors pitch in awfully calculative performances, consistently oblivious to their respective characters’ spirits, and because you are never quite convinced of the characters they are playing and their feelings for each other, right from the onset you care way too less than you should about the aftermath of Omkara’s henchman plotting against his cohort using Omkara’s love as a mere tool. Still, surprisingly enough, somehow both of these performers somehow get their act together in the scene that mattered–the climax. Its about 120 minutes too late to feel for them, but the director’s really given his all to those final fifteen minutes and ends up being successful in squeezing some sympathy from cynical watchers like me for the unpredictable and shockingly brutal end to Omkara’s love story.

It must also be said that there actually are a few things which rival the boredom of watching a whole episode of Bhabhi on Star Plus. One of those is watching Bipasha Basu do a whole 7 minute jhatak-matak dance routine. And to actually survive through two such full-length songs where we have to bear her giving the whole set of adayein complete with nain-matakka from her squint is really so bad, its funny. The girl, with due respect to her miniscule acting talent, is blatantly miscast here and absolutely thanda as the UP nautch girl Billo.

Saving the day from the aforementioned three performers are the next three lead performers who bring in some credibility to the whole set-up. Konkona Sen Sharma is totally identifiable and just downright adorable as Devgan’s sister, Indu. Right from her dialect to her lived-in maternal affection for everyone around her, she’s just right. Not a single wrong note here or there, she really brings a broad smile everytime she holds the chin of the distressed characters around her and utters “hansi badi mehengi ho gayi hai aaj kal” . Thankfully, as the second half draws to a close, her character’s scope becomes bigger and bigger until the spotlight shines solely on her and Konkona’s all too glad to oblige us with some well-felt theatrics. This is the stuff real performances are made of and I am so glad that even in the company of mainstream heavyweights, Konkona’s given enough screentime to leave a lasting impression.

And then there’s Saif, who’s surprisingly convincing as Langda Tyagi. From his hilarious, expletive-filled opening sequence to the slimier-by-every-successive minute routine where he’s supposed to bitch and plot and bitch and plot and bitch some more of how Dolly’s dating Kesu Firangi, how Kesu Firangi gifted the bejeweled waistband from Omkara’s heirloom to Billo and so on and so forth, Saif pulls it off with laudable ease. Though you have seen it all in the form of Pallavis and Mandiras in saas-bahu serials, still its reasonably entertaining watching this despicable character use reverse psychology and perfect timing of letting the wrong people hear the right thing in the wrong way to his own advantage. The havoc that just this one character creates would have carried far more punch if, as I said before, I was affected by how deeply the two protagonists (Omkara and Dolly) were affected. Instead, its the collateral damage on Kesu’s and Billo’s relationship thanks to Langda again that is far more sincere even with one tenth the screentime that Vivek Oberoi [consistently enthusiastic] gets with Bipasha.

The trend of mixing something worth lauding with something worth moaning about continues behind the camera as well. While placing a Shakespeare play in the heart of small-time crook infested UP has been done as deftly as one would expect of Mr Bhardwaj (quite unlike others, being a UPite from birth, all those dialects, jokes and expletives really hit home with me), the fact that the politics and action sit very clumsily in the screenplay (atleast to me, the magnitude of Omkara’s strengths and power came across as very vague and rushed), the central love story doesn’t have its moments and things really never warm up in the first half, it does take away a lot.

While the decidedly fresh and earthy soundtrack had gems like “Namak Ishq Ka”, “O Saathi Re”, “Sabse Bade Ladaiya Re” and “Naina Thag Lenge” which literally smelt of a remote Uttar Pradesh kasba (for want of better expression) right from their sound to their lyrics, the fact that my favourite, “Naina Thag Lenge” is used way too carelessly in the movie (as a background score to Kareena’s courtship with Devgan five minutes into the movie and it doesn’t work as the mournful suggestions of suspicion and mistrust are way too early and uncalled for) and that two full-length dance routines have the most bland picturisation ever (thanks to Ms Basu), I hold a gripe here as well.

Even the cinematographer is up playing tricks with the viewer feeding our eyes with reels on reels of unstimulating imagery until the climax *SPOILER ALERT* when a lone camera capturing a newly wed bride swinging dead above the dead groom on the floor has a shock value that’s way higher on the Richter scale than the whole film combined.

To sum it all, I haven’t lost faith in the film-making skill of Vishal Bharadwaj and I sincerely hope he continues to adapt more Shakespeare plays, but doesn’t miscast the way he has with Omkara. Yes, there are emotions running the entire length of the movie, but they are nowhere quite as deep as they should have been. There’s this nagging unshruggable feeling that something really is amiss this time around and surprisingly enough its got nothing to do with the excellent plot.

Still, the film’s worth a watch once for its intricate storyline (a rarity in our films nowadays), for watching Saif and Konkona perform and for a genuinely good climactic half an hour.

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