Before I say anything about the movie, let me mention that I am biased towards Monsieur Vishal Bharadwaj. I think his version of the Macbeth was perhaps one of the finest films made in Indian cinema (my review of Maqbool). Hence comparisons would inevitably be made. However, I wouldn’t venture into two water tight areas, as they would have been oft discussed and bled mercilessly enough number of times.
Shakespear’s Macbeth VS Othello.
Vishal’s adaptation of the plays to Indian settings.
For the first, I can only offer an experential view which I do not think is relevant here. For the second, there is no question that Vishal does that extremely well. Instead what I am going to do is talk about one of the central tenets of Branding.
A brand serves to create associations and expectations among products made by a producer. And it is your calling card in the mind of the customer. Now if we look at the consumer’s mind for a minute like little boxes where information about each different thing is stored, one would of course agree that to make a customer regard you as something separate from the rest, you need to occupy one of those boxes uniquely. So, branding always has to talk about one single compelling benefit that the brand is offering to the customer. It is not because the brand doesn’t have more benefits inherent with it, but because your customer cannot decipher and remember all of them. So though Volvo buses might be very comfortable, and might give great mileage, they would pitch upon the safety aspect so that they could occupy a unique positioning in the consumer’s mind. The Tata group has it’s fingers in so many businesses that it cannot have a functional single appeal. Hence the Tata brand name stands for trust (encompassing both character & capability). It is precisely this USP, this brand image, that makes a product ethereal, makes it beyond the ordinary, and transcends just beyond the functional.
Both the plays, and by extension the movies deal with baser human emotions, Macbeth with guilt, Othello with jealousy. Lady Macbeth is the human embodiment of that emotion in Macbeth, and that indeed is the central brand identity of the play. This was immaculately brought out by Maqbool, in which Tabu has played the role of a lifetime. No matter what is happening in Maqbool (and it is as detailed a movie as any other), it is all happening around her, either in person, or in spirit. In the end when she gets up to wash the imaginary blood stains from the walls, you precisely know what the gentle hint is about. In Othello, the same role, the central brand identity is Iago, who is jealousy humanized. He is supposed to be the devil incarnate, and though the play is named after some other character, we all know every moment whose story it exactly is. And this is precisely where Omkara falters, and does not deliver enough. Vishal Bharadwaj, while placing in little details about the background falters on the central vein of his script. His Iago is simply not evil enough. Not shudderingly repulsive. Just pathetic! And this is an injustice to what Saif Ali Khan could do(as he has shown in the time given to him in the movie). You are supposed to find him repulsive as a sapola as Saif mentions. Instead, at the end you do end up with a very tame bunny! Hell man, here was your opportunity to create the Indian Lecter. And the chance just withers by.
The movie is amazingly well researched, great on technicalities, and very finely attuned. However, just because it does not deliver on it’s central brand promise, it feels very much without a soul. As if all those details were cosmetic. As if the clothes matching the character’s basic instinct (black for Othello, creams for Desdemona, and Green of envy for Iago) feel almost like the director is trying too hard.
If the film doesn’t appeal, or doesn’t do too well at the box office (the latter I do not think shall happen, as people are going in to watch Ajay Devgan and Kareena, not Othello and Desdemona and wouldn’t be worried about little nuances that separate the good from the great - Maqbool certainly falls in the great category), scribes would already be out by saying perhaps Vishal Bharadwaj’s way of making films (making a completely bound script, with dialogues, colours, nuances, and taking no deviations from them) is perhaps not right. I do not agree. This movie hasn’t delivered the punch because the script wasn’t attuned to the T, and not because of the opposite. Vishal, you do not need to change your way of working. Just need to spend some time listening to your characters talking to each other first, in your head!
Better luck next time, Mr. Bharadwaj!
PS 1. Will somebody end Viveik(or whatever is his current spelling) Oberoi’s misery? He is so bloody pathetic, I am actually embarrassed at having liked him in Company. He tries just SO hard to be a part of the scene, and fails pathetically.
PS2. I saw this on Friday, wrote half of this on that day, and since then a series of misfortunes and plain assed laziness has prevented me from completing this. Sorry for the edgy language and the incomplete feel. Just HAVE to post this now.