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Bollywood: Omkara
Aug. 28th, 2006 09:45 pmI just don't know what to say about this film, it's that bloody amazing. It's the sort of film you show people when they say Bollywood is all silliness and dancing and singing and nothing under the surface. Because this is the film that gives the lie to that.
This is a Bollywood version of Othello, so its subject matter is not what you would call cheery and the slow slide towards the end is just horrible to watch. The film has switched the locale to Utar Pradesh; Omkara (Othello) is a half-caste gangster working for a politician who has just been promoted leaving the inevitable power vacuum of his own successor. Like Othello he passes over the Iago character (Langda) to his own undoing. I don't think there's a perfomance that is offkey here, but Saif Ali Khan owns this film as the villainous Langda; I am not sure I'll ever see him in the same way again. The only problem with this film is that it is so depressing that I will not be able to watch it again - it's even more depressing than the play. It now joins Devdas in the category of 'films which blew me away but cannot ever be seen again for fear I will never recover from the depression.'
ETA: Yep, the more I think about it, the more depressing the film becomes. I don't know - I guess there is something about updating the setting of Shakespearean tragedies which makes them even more heart-wrenching?
ETA 2: But the DVD of this film reminded me that I really hate Eros' tendency to make it near impossible to get to watch the film without sitting through hours of ads for their products. Feck off! I paid good money for the DVD - I don't want to have to sit through silly ad after ad.
This is a Bollywood version of Othello, so its subject matter is not what you would call cheery and the slow slide towards the end is just horrible to watch. The film has switched the locale to Utar Pradesh; Omkara (Othello) is a half-caste gangster working for a politician who has just been promoted leaving the inevitable power vacuum of his own successor. Like Othello he passes over the Iago character (Langda) to his own undoing. I don't think there's a perfomance that is offkey here, but Saif Ali Khan owns this film as the villainous Langda; I am not sure I'll ever see him in the same way again. The only problem with this film is that it is so depressing that I will not be able to watch it again - it's even more depressing than the play. It now joins Devdas in the category of 'films which blew me away but cannot ever be seen again for fear I will never recover from the depression.'
ETA: Yep, the more I think about it, the more depressing the film becomes. I don't know - I guess there is something about updating the setting of Shakespearean tragedies which makes them even more heart-wrenching?
ETA 2: But the DVD of this film reminded me that I really hate Eros' tendency to make it near impossible to get to watch the film without sitting through hours of ads for their products. Feck off! I paid good money for the DVD - I don't want to have to sit through silly ad after ad.
