If you want to exude the essence of India, you can’t do much better than the tantric hum of this movie’s title. Om Shanti Om marks the second collaboration between choreographer-turned-director, Farah Khan, and superstar, Shahrukh Khan, and everything about the film brilliantly evokes the cultural transformation of India in the last 20 years, a heady mix of ancient spirituality and pop sensibility. Om Shanti Om is different than her first picture, the masala musical, Main Hoon Na, but it’s irresistibly watchable.
Om Shanti Om plays upon the ancient principle that lies at the core of Indian dreams: reincarnation, the belief in new beginnings and opportunities. In 1977, Om Prakash (Shahrukh Khan) is an eager, movie-obsessed young man who with his friend (relative newcomer, Shreyas Talpade) loiters around Bombay and its film studios, daydreaming, catching any insight into the business of which he longs to be a part, and hoping to get a glimpse of his favorite starlet, Shantipriya (model Deepika Padukone, in her first film role).
Like Farhan Akther’s superb Shahrukh vehicle, Don, that came out a year ago, Om Shanti Om revels in nostalgia for the swinging late ‘70s, presumably the magical movie years of Shahrukh Khan’s own boyhood. You get a sense of the energetic, slapdash masala films starring Jeetendra and Mithun Chakravarty (who appropriately, have cameos in this movie). The song “Doom Taana” is an ode to the song sequences of the ‘70s era musicals, as it goes from scenes of vivid, stately Bharat Natyam dancers to a jaunty dance on a tennis court - ancient India at worship and modern India at play.