Omkara

As I come out of Omkara, I think of only one thing - "What is Vishal Bharadwaj made of". Originally a music director, he has been making waves in the next-gen Indian film-making scene after Makdee, Maqbool, Omkara and the yet unreleased Blue Umbrella.

Omkara is Vishal 'versatile' Bharadwaj's adaptation of Shakespeare's Othello.

Omkara(Ajay Devgan) is the story of an intense bahubali (right-hand man to a politician aka bhaisaab (Nasiruddin Shah)) in the downtrodden UP. Langda Tyagi (Saif Ali Khan) is his wisecrack bro and his most trusted co-shooter among his gang(shers). Dolly (Kareena Kapoor) is a doll of a woman who is deeply in love with Omkara. The essential conflict of the story is: the jealousy bug bites Langda when Omkara promotes the suave Angrez Keshu(Vivek Oberoi) as his successor. This starts an engaging account of how sassy Langda overturns the life of everyone else.

First things first. Saif rocks. Saif is increasingly turning out to be the most versatile star actor after the dependable Aamir Khan. The most memorable character of Omkara is Langda Tyagi aka Saif Ali Khan. Langda is like your Gabbar or Mr. Mogambo or CirKit of Bollywood. His dialogues like "Yesham kar de" are bound to get whistles and become legendary. Everyone else does a decent job, but decent acting with a great director is not worth talking about.

Except for two songs of Billo 'Bips' Chamanbahar (love interest of Keshu), the movie flows with tremendous ease. The screenplay magically blends Shakespeare's plot devices with Indian storytelling. Singing, Dancing, Crying, Emotions, Relationships... are all integral part of Indian storytelling. Employing all of them with appropriate characterizations and juxtapositions, Vishal does a great job at taking Shakespeare to the masses. Still I am not sure if he has pulled it off with the masses, because we still dont like reality. We still would wait for a KANK. We still would not send it to the Oscars.

After Maqbool and Omkara, Vishal seems to have mastered tragedy. Vishal Bharadwaj has ofcourse proved that the classics of Shakespeare are universal and relevant themes even today. Lets see if he masters comedy also (like Shakespeare did) with his next - Mr. Mehta and Mrs. Singh.