Review by Afzal-s2007

The first thing that deserves mention in Omkara is its authentic, carefully cultivated sense of place, as it relishes its location in rural Uttar Pradesh (UP), a dry, dusty land, distant from the first world civilisation that can be found in Delhi, UP's state capital. And Omkara's characters are suited to live on the land, wild and gauche, but also revealing depth and colour, modern in their own way, and speaking a mixture of Hindi with the local dialect, so much so it is hard to understand what they are saying half of the time (so for once even most Indians would probably benefit from subtitles). It is almost a place forgotten by time, and yet pockets like this still exist in the vastness of India.

The superb location is telling for Vishal Bharadwaj's reworking of Othello, Shakespeare's famous Elizabethan play with its heady thematic mix of racism, illicit sex and power. Omkara retains the illicit sex and power, and cleverly adapts European racism towards African into India's residual but still rigid caste system, itself a racial system- after all the Sanskrit word for Caste is Varna, which means colour.

The plot of Omkara concerns an extended family of dacoits, or bandits, headed by Omkara 'Omi' Shukla, played by Ajay Devgan, a half-caste who now heads the family by default as his father had no full-caste heirs. Omkara is a man of substance. True, he is a bandit who leads a gang of dacoits, but this being India, where there exists a nexus between politics and crime, he is a man of high local standing, and he is staunch allies with Baaisaab, a local politician (Naseeruddin Shah). But in India caste can still matter a great deal, and when Omkara marries the daughter of a powerful and proud local family of high caste, an explosive situation is narrowly avoided. Still, as the wedding is organised and an election nears, the situation is ripe for exploitation by Saif Ali Khan's Langda, the reprised Iago, a deceivingly simple lieutenant of the gang unhappy with his position.

It should be clear that Omkara is not a traditional 'Bollywood' film. It is earthy, even grizzly, and shocking in its off-centre depiction of India. However it reintegrates distinctive 'Bollywood' elements by cleverly and imaginatively reworking them into the film. For instance, a brilliant 'Bollywood' song and dance- though refracted through a mujra club night.

Moreover, Saif Ali Khan, Vivek Oberoi, Ajay Devgan, Bipasha Basu and Kareena Kapoor are mainstream stars and all are skillfully used, along with parallel cinema (India's Independent cinema) regular Shah. The cast as a whole give strong performances. However, Saif Ali Khan deserves special mention for rising to his role with such relish, matched with a deep insight into his character, the insidious, canny, deeply flawed but always charismatic Langda.

My only problem with Omkara is that it seems to want to have its cake and eat it too. While it undoubtedly contains an Indian reality overlooked in mainstream Indian films, this gritty, though vibrant realism sits oddly with Omkara's visual indulgence, and the script's sense of doomed tragedy fails, in this one aspect, to modernise the original play, and makes Omkara seem almost fey and old fashioned. Combined, these elements of the film risk upsetting the modern viewer's willingness to suspend his or her sense of disbelief. Still, Omkara is a vibrant and original reworking of Othello in Modern India which signals the advancement of mainstream Indian Cinema.