Omkara… A Second Viewing
Konkona Sen Sharma as Indu stole this movie for me the first time I saw it. I fell in love with her character and her face from her first scene, as she was teasing her brother, Omi. During her last two scenes in the movie, the one when she confronts Langda and the one where she is looking into the well, I was shaking in my seat from the sheer emotion and power she conveyed. It isn’t often that an actor can elicit that type of reaction from me.
I watched this again on video last night, and still managed to have a visceral reaction to those scenes, but what impressed me watching this movie the first time around and really stuck with me the second time around is how realistically the women in this movie are portrayed. The scene when Dolly is cooking and Indu makes a joke about the proper way to a man’s heart – the way the married and crude Indu delivers this line with a straight face to the virgin and inexperienced Dolly, the stare between them before their giggling – this is how women really talk to each other, regardless of “experience” or “background”. Notice that Dolly was not shocked, even though Indu seemed to be going for shock value, because sexual innuendo among women is universal, beginning with our mothers, grandmothers, cousins, schoolmates. I know more women who had grandmothers who joked about the proper way to a man’s heart than than grandmothers that didn’t. Every scene between these women two rang true as to how women communicate with each other, the bonds that women create with each other (note the scene when Indu promised to take care of Dolly if Omi wanted to call off the marriage), and reminded me of the conversations and intimacy of own weekly women-only dinner parties. And, I cannot imagine another actress in the world who could have portrayed Indo with all of her worldliness, cunning and compassion with the skill that Konkona Sen Sharma did. Would the relationship between Indu and Dolly have been as powerful with another actress portraying Indu?
I have been thinking all day about what other movie really represents how women talk to each other, how they interact with each other, how they enjoy each other the way that these two women do, and I am coming up blank. Movies have a tendency to portray women as hard or soft, virgins or whores, black or white. Women in movies who talk about men usually either talk crap about them or talk about having relationships and sex with men as some type of transformative experience. Or, they may just be teasing the one Slut/Angel in the group about their experience/inexperience, as if to prove a point about female sexuality. It is a rare movie that portrays women as we really are – multifaceted; strong and caring, sexual and sensual, woman and girl – able to discuss sex, relationships, family and home, regardless of our differences, and not just use female conversation as a simplistic plot device.
The women in Omkara are complex, at least with their relations to each other (although upon second viewing I still think Dolly’s relationship with Omi was very simplistic.) They are sexual without being sluts. They joke while they work and tend to the business of running their homes and caring for their men, yet they are strong, independent people who don’t lose themselves or their personalities to their men. I am fascinated that in a movie about the relationship between three men, Vishal Bharadwaj has given true character and voice to the women. I think I would be more impressed if the subtitles were literal translations, I think I would have found these scenes to be much funnier and more profound if I could understand the “vulgar” language that I know they are speaking but can’t understand.
I will recommend to all women one of my favourite movies that impressed me, another movie made by a man that accurately portrays a strong woman, Spike Lee’s movie “She’s Gotta Have It”. While some may find the main character, a sexually liberated feminist, hard to take, Lee created an authentic personality who is simultaneously intangible and ethereal. The movie explores what it is that women really want and/or need from men, and it is so true to life that my girlfriends and I spent hours discussing how it was that a man could have written this movie after we first watched it. While thinking about Omkara today, I remembered She’s Gotta Have It, but Nora Darling, the main character, is only one woman. I only wish I could find in my memory another movie that impressed me the way that Omkara has by realistically portraying relationships between multiple women….
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
it was not all that. imo omkara was below par. it would have been much better if vishal itself had produced it.
maqbool’s ending is more.. it will freak you out.
i think Omkara is a overrated movie. i agree that its a good movie(not a great movie again).Maqbool was much better.i was actually waiting for the movie(omkara) to get over half way through.Saif ali khan rocked in the movie. And the hype is basically coz the mainstream actors have acted in the movie.Which again proves that stars matter a lot in indian industry.
“And the hype is basically coz the mainstream actors have acted in the movie.Which again proves that stars matter a lot in indian industry.”
Precisely!