Omkara: The power of a song

(image courtesy: www.xkcd.com)

I watched Omkara over the weeked. At first, I did not like the movie and was prepared to do an autopsy of what was wrong with the movie) and may well end up doing that. However, I can't do any justice to this review if I don't mention this song from the movie which has capitivated me more than any song has, in the past few years. The lyrics of the song go

Ooo...Saathi re

Din doobe na

Aa chal din ko roke

Dhoop ke peeche daude..

Chaanv chue na

(hence the connection with the xkcd pic)

If you are a reasonably insane movie watcher and occasionally read reviews to find out what has been going on in the Indian movie industry, you would have known that Vishal Bharadwaj too to movie direction from music direction and paid homage to Shakespeare with two movies - Omkara (adaptation of Othello) and Maqbool (adaptation of McBeth). However, if you are like me and do not know the story of Othello, please do not read the synopsis before watching the movie. Not because, it will ruin the movie for you, but because the movie deserves to be seen with an unbiased opinion. The following might contain spoilers so do not read further if you wish to keep an open mind and see the movie.

Omkara is a movie about a lot of things - there is the jealousy of Langda Tyagi (played well by Saif Ali Khan), there is the rise to power of Omkara (Ajay Devgan) and there is the innocence of Kesu Phirangi (Vivek Oberoi). You can forgive Vishal for trying to further milk the Ajay Devgan - Vivek Oberoi chemistry and setting up a scenario that viewers are familiar through RGV's Company. You can also forgive him for adding all the bells and whistles possible, by adding Naseeruddin Shah and Konkana Sen Sharma in roles that could have been done just as well by any other actor. However, what you cannot move past, is that the characters are easily manipulated in this movie. The heart of it all is Omkara himself who cannot see the ulterior motives behind Tyagi's claims or can't see his wife's loyality despite the fact that she chose to leave everything to be with him.

While I could go on and rant about this further, this post is mainly about this song which is holding my hand and preventing me from writing anything against this movie. You see, while the movie is about a lot of things, it is fundamentally about the love between Omkara and Dolly (Kareena Kapoor). When you see the movie a second time, you will see that these two have little time to be with each other and each moment is as important to them as the other. This song captures the beauty of this emotion, by Gulzaar's precise and deep lyrics. In these days, a lyricist rarely gets a chance to be heard above the layers of orchestrization and visuals that unfold on screen. However, thanks to Vishal's brilliant work in this song, the lyrics lead the way and set the mood of the song. Listening to this song, you feel that this movie was all about this love story and everything else just unfolds around the lead pair. The song felt so powerful that while I sat through predictable scenes and bad screenplay, I had this song running in the back of my head which set a mood for the film that no dialogue, camera angle, acting or prior review could do.