Omkara!

Since I’ve been here in Zambia I haven’t had much of a chance to watch many English movies cause my parents aren’t so keen on them and I’d rather not watch them alone so instead have had a good dose of hindi movies… and thankfully a good dose of good hindi movies!! Well, mostly at least. Just like some English movies are absolute rubbish, so are some hindi movies and just like some English movies are fantastic so are some hindi movies!!
Anyway, yesterday I had the chance to watch one such great new-on-the-scene hindi movies; Omkara. As I am sure, I have already made clear; I enjoyed it, I really enjoyed it! I was impressed and I knew I would be and that’s why I wanted to watch it anyway. A few years ago, the director of Omkara (something Bhardwaj!) made Maqbool which is his hindi interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Having studied Macbeth in school, I knew the story pretty well and I also loved it, so you can imagine that I watched it with some expectations and I wasn’t disappointed. He did a great job at setting Shakespeare’s classic tragedy into an Indian context, changing the characters accordingly and still not losing their deeper meanings. He managed to bring about the eerie effect of Lady Macbeth’s character even better than the English movies of Macbeth that I have watched.
Omkara, is the adaptation of another famous Shakespeare play; Othello. I haven’t had the chance to read this one yet but after watching Omkara, I think I must! After watching the movie, I checked up a summary of Othello on the net and found (as far as the summary tells me) that he’s done it again! Othello is Omkara, Cassio is Kesu, Desdemona is Dolly etc etc. So the story is the same but it’s not just that… (you can’t really go wrong there; after all it’s a Shakespeare story!) Transferring from page to stage, or page to reel in this instance, is not an easy job and the effects are important, that’s what impressed me. He (Vishal Bharadwaj, that's what his name is!!) manages to make your hair stand on end…
Anyway, before you go and watch the movie because I am saying all of this and then come and yell at me because you didn’t like it as much as I did (!!!!) let me tell you that this is purely my opinion and as I have not written in my blog for a while, so I thought I might as well write about Omkara as the movie is still fresh in my mind.
But still I am going to dare to recommend it! If you don’t believe me then for your information it almost got nominated as India’s nominee for best international movie in the Oscars, but apparently Rang De Basanti beat it there, hmmmmmm, I have my opinions about that but that’s a different debate!! Lol
If you like a good “off-beat” movie with some action, something that will get you thinking, something that’ll give you a taste of well-made hindi movies and Shakespeare at the same time, Omkara is good. Even if you know hindi though you might want to find a DVD with subtitles… I had to watch it with subtitles myself, cause the hindi was pretty hard to understand; just like Shakespearean English is a little hard to understand.
Anyway,
More later!