Mountain of light

How many times in the recent past have I seen a Hindi movie and said to myself, gosh our movies are looking increasingly like Hollywood. Where is the India that I know and dearly love, in all these movies? I don’t know who these characters are and where do they live and breathe? Where do they get their accents? Certainly not the school I went to! Their fantasies and aspirations seems so unreal and while I allow the moviemakers the license to be creative and imaginative, this is something else. I mean at the rate some of these directors are going I might start comparing them to animated movies. They are movies about relationships, families, love gained, lost, gained again, and then lost again. More like romantic fiction maybe.

So, when I see a movie like Omkara, which is set in rustic UP and refreshes my Bhojpuri like nothing else, it makes me very happy. Even though this is not the best movie I have ever seen and certainly not as good as Maqbool, I would still stand up and applaud the director. Atleast someone in big Bollywood is thinking beyond the foreign locales and trying to tap the vast breath of options that this country offers and actually does justice to all of it. The music, the characters, the story and all the supporting props come together to tell the story of three local strongmen – Omkara (Ajay Devgun), Langda Tyagi (Saif Ali Khan) and Keshu Firangi (Viviek Oberoi) who work under the umbrella of the local politician Bhaisaab (Naseeruddin Shah).

The movie promises a lot in the first 15 minutes with a brilliant action scene and then it sort of tapers off and is not as tight as I would have wanted it to be. I am not sure if there was any need of an item number, but I am willing to grant it for commercial reasons. Bipasha Basu in that role, even with her mouthing all the Bhojpuri sweet nothings, was not the best fit for the role. Konkona Sen was as always brilliant. I am now beginning to wonder if there is any director around who can test her abilities to the limit. She always seems to perform these roles effortlessly. She is slowly easing herself into the category of Naseeruddin who pulls off another great role.

All in all a good movie and great music. Even though the director is capable of much better, this is an admirable effort and deserves to be applauded.