Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade, Kiron Kher There’s no denying that Om Shanti Om is Farah Khan’s mag...
Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Rampal, Shreyas Talpade, Kiron Kher
There’s no denying that Om Shanti Om is Farah Khan’s magnum opus. The musical thriller which just turned sweet 16 on Thursday is endearing
for its retro look in the first half and the over-the-top
satirical tone in the second half.
Om Shanti Om is a lot of things at once: a satire
on the Hindi film industry, a romantic saga, a comedy, and a revenge film; but
at heart, it’s a story about love withstanding any and every obstacle placed in
front of it. Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone are remarkable, as charming as
one can be that too effortlessly.
Om Shanti Om is remarkable - how did they manage to
pull off a tale as old as Indian cinema and reinvent it for the audience of
that time and also get in the big bucks at the box office? Maybe it’s got
something to do with the directorial skills of Farah Khan which was already
obvious with Main Hoon Na.
This film features an array of cringey and cheesy
dialogues but you never find them weird for some reason. Om Shanti Om is a
flawed film - but Farah Khan creates a kind of lore to breathe in that it
starts to feel real at times. It’s both sad and cathartic at the end and Farah
Khan perfectly balances the two to create something that would be considered a
modern classic in the coming years.
Shah Rukh Khan is what perhaps made this film as
famous and memorable as it is, along with a great cast. Deepika Padukone made a
confident debut as Shanti Priya and Sandy, Arjun Rampal is menacingly perfect
as the bad guy while Shreyas Talpade is also really good and funny as Pappu.
The second half - while significantly weaker than
the first half - is far more funnier than the first half. The film is, also,
excessively self-aware. It knows what it’s doing and parodies itself
continuously in the second half, but subtly. It also references old SRK films
and then cracks a joke about them.
The film is inspired by the 1949 film Mahal and the
1958 film Madhumati but feels fresh. It’s really predictable but it feels as
if it’s never been done. The same goes for the reincarnation plot line. Done to
death in Madhumati, Mahal, Mehbooba, and Kudrat to name a few, yet it
seems fresh and new.
The songs are excellent, each and every track. Of
course, they did copy Karz’s Ek hasina thi for Daastan-e-Om Shanti Om, but it
doesn’t feel like a bad imitation of a great song, rather it feels as if it’s a
tribute to that immortal Kishore Kumar ditty. Deewangi deewangi too is a tribute to the Manmohan Desai-directed film Naseeb (1981), which features an
array of famous stars.
What makes Om Shanti Om so memorable are the great
characters, the command Farah Khan had over the film, and the excellent
performances from the entire star cast. Also, nobody does end credits like Farah
Khan!
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