16 Years of Omkara: A dark and dazzling take on love, lust, sorrows, and subterfuge

It’s 16 years since Vishal Bhardwaj’s _Omkara_, the Indian adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Othello. Why is no other filmmaker in India as fascinated by that legendary playwright than Bhardwaj? How should we gaze at his adaptations? They are certainly not rip offs since there are due credits mentioned during announcements and promotions, and the filmmaker adds his own tadka to the OG piece. Homage? Inspiration? Maybe. The cast of Omkara was undeniably solid.

For those yearning for massy, masala movies today, Omkara is a classic revisit. The lingo is explosive and so is the milieu. Ajay Devgn, the leading man, wears his arrogance on his sleeves, or rather in his eyes. The intensity in his eyes blends both romance and revenge. He has two cohorts, the sincere (Vivek Oberoi) and the scheming ( Saif Ali Khan). Oberoi’s appointment as Devgn’s successor is what triggers the narrative of the rest of this gritty drama that hinges on love, lust, sorrows, and subterfuge.

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Bhardwaj’s groundbreaking music accompanied by Gulzar’s trailblazing words added fun to a film driven by darkness. There are moments of humour that are both subtle and shocking. It features some of the ensemble cast’s best work. Deebak Dobriyal crackled with his nuances and Naseeruddin Shah used minimalism to convey his inner conflicts and turmoil. Bipasha Basu oozed oomph without resorting to voyeurism, Konkona Sensharma was, as always, a firecracker, and Kareena Kapoor Khan showed how she could make a trait as harmless as naïveté charming.

But the one man who had the time of his life was Saif Ali Khan, the ultimate embodiment of cool prior to unleashing his most hideous character on celluloid. Hideous not only through his physicality, his soul is corrupt and wicked too. He’s the first character in the film to face deceit and defeat, which ultimately leads to everyone’s tragedy including his own. The best compliment an actor can receive for his performance is for people to say they didn’t expect him to be cast for this role. Sriram Raghavan made the first attempt with Ek Hasina Thi but Vishal Bhardwaj took Khan’s deliciously twisted side miles ahead with Langda Tyagi.

Langda Tyagi could barely walk in the film due to a broken leg, he ran the farthest in terms of praise. As Shakespeare said- What’s there in a name? Bhardwaj would know better.

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