Omkara and Shakespear

Omkara, an Indian apaptation of Shakespear's legendary tragic play Othello is a can be treated as a misnomer for it doesn't do justice to the creativity of the legendary writer Shakespeare nor does it grant Vishal Bharadwaj with the creative space he created for himself. The director not only chose a rather rural image of Uttar Pradesh where political arena is dominated by the outlaws appointed by political parties themselves, but chose to deviate from Shakespeare so much as to allow the conquest of Good over evil despite the clutches of tragic events.

An attempt has been made to relive the characters of Othello, Desdemona, Cassio, Iago, Emily, Roderigo, Bianca in Omkara (Omi) Sukla?(Ajay Devagan), Dolly Mishra (Kareena Kapoor), Kessu (Vivek Oberoi), Langra Tyagi (Saif Ali Khan), Indu (Konkona Sen Gupta), Raju(Deepak Doberial) , and Billo (Bipasha Basu) respectively.

The movie opens much like the first act of Othello with a conversation flooded with abusive and obscene remarks by Langra Tyagi between Raju, the bridgegroom of Dolly Mishra on the day of the wedding.

From the Library of Congress: TITLE: Thos. W. Keen...

dolly parton en american idol

Dolly Parton

Tyagi makes his intention of crashing the wedding in an attempt to stop it in a rather calm way to his pal Raju. He claims that the bride to be, the daughter of a lawyer would rather marry the bahubaali (Indian adaptation of the Moor) Omkara. There is no question of loyalty or disloyalty in Tyagi's rather unperturbed attitude towards the scene of events. He merely registers them to be a rather ironic piece which makes for interesting gossip. The fateful occasion comes to a halt with the kidnapping of the bride and the delay of the bridegroom. The father of the bride rightly protests against such a barbaric attitude. He confronts Omkara, the man who committed the grotesque crime.