Entertainment
The film is not over yet
A woman dressed in pink walks a red carpet and extends her long arms to greet the crowd that has gathered for her. A man from the crowd reaches out and returns his salute. As she walks, the wind intertwines the end of her scarf with her bracelet and pulls her away from the crowd as it follows her. Bollywood love song has been playing since she got out of her car, but it swells as the man is carried away by the long scarf of the woman his heart is in love with, connected to her as thin as the piece of cloth stuck inside her jewelry.
Most people who grew up watching Bollywood movies probably know where this scene from the 2007 film Om Shanti Om came from. It came out when I was just in kindergarten, but it has stuck in my life ever since. Every year my family and I watch this movie together sometimes because there is nothing else to watch and sometimes just because we want to sing the songs but it never got old for me. My siblings and I quote from it as we watch, adding hand movements for dramatic effect. I watched this movie growing up, noticing changes each time, marveling at the storytelling and the wonderful melodramatic genius of it.
For those who don’t know, Om Shanti Om is a classic Bollywood tale about drama, love, and family. It begins in 1977 following Om Prakash Makhija (played by Shah Rukh Khan), a junior artist whose dreams of becoming a big star are tarnished by his last name and lack of connections. He laments his mother and his only friend about his bad luck, saying his father lived and died as a junior artist and that he would too. One night, he stands drunk on a box and gives a Filmfare Awards acceptance speech, claiming that his bottle is the award and a comb is his microphone. If there is no happy ending, he said in a scrambled voice. So this is not the end. The film is not over yet!
Despite her dismal outlook, Om yearns for superstar beauty Shanti Priya (the woman in the pink dress) and after a series of chance encounters, the two become friends. He falls in love with her, not knowing that she has already secretly married a film producer.
The first half of the film pays homage to all the Bollywood classics while satirizing famous filmmakers and actors in the industry. He laughs at his own melodrama Om frequently jokes with his mother that she is too vaporous. This first half sets the contrast between superstars of the late 70s and junior artists like Om, and the pain that comes with not being able to be successful because of the family you were born into. In the movie (and often in real life), the actors were assigned roles based on their last name, not necessarily because of their talent. And when Om realizes that Shanti Priya is married, not having thought twice about the junior artist romantically, her jealousy turns sour and the injustice of it all becomes more palpable. Om walks the set in a teal sherwani after realizing that Shantis’ heart belongs to someone else with a ballad of unrequited love playing in the background as the rain chases the rest of the team. A few nights later, Shanti and Om are both killed.
As a child, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the first half of the movie. Stories of love and heartbreak were common to almost every Bollywood movie, and songs by this half were more reminiscent of old Bollywood styles than they were 2007 pop pop. As a recurring viewer, there is a disturbing feeling knowing that something bad is going to happen to the lead role, the person you are supposed to be supporting as Om will die soon. I knew this even when I was young, dreading that Om and Shanti would never be together. A strange kind of sadness washed over me when Om died in the first half of the film not for the character himself, but for the life he wished to have with the woman he loved.
Oms Grief is unexpected because Bollywood movies are a form of escape, not reality. The hero always gets the girl. But before all of that happens, Om dies and the first half ends. Here the film changes from a light romantic comedy set in the 70s to a darker revenge story.
After Om’s death, we’ll see him again 30 years later. He is reborn as the son of a superstar, living the life he always dreamed of as a junior artist. He wakes up in a large circular bed with servants sliding slippers under his feet before they can touch the ground and as he walks to the balcony to greet his fans below, other servants walk alongside. from him and offer apples and orange juice. This Om (this privileged reincarnation of him) has no memory of the struggles or loves he had in his past life. Instead, he only experienced comfort. He is offered many roles, and even when he arrives late on set, the directors give him a free pass because of his last name.
But when someone brings Om back to the set where he worked before he died 30 years ago, he begins to remember his past life. After meeting the man who killed him, Om remembers Shanti, his mother and his friends. Om spends the rest of the film looking for ways to bring the killer to justice.
While the first half of the film paid homage to the ’70s, the second half satirises the industry around the time of the film’s release. Nepotism was (and continues to be) a problem in Bollywood, as has crazy fan culture and celebrity rights. Countless Bollywood celebrities, from legends like Rekha to modern superstars like Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar, make cameos in the film, some of them even making fun of themselves.
Even though the story gets darker, the comedy reminds us of what the story really is about love. The love that binds Om to his mother, who had known he was still alive, his friend and Shanti, who had not reincarnated as Om.
As I got older and started to write, I began to appreciate the film in a whole new light. The characters in Om Shanti Oms are thoughtful and pleasing to the eye. As theatrical as it may sound, they perfectly advance the plot while filling both comedic and dramatic roles. Oms’ mother in particular stands out as a woman who was initially destroyed by grief over the deaths of her son and husband only to be invigorated by the quest for a killer. After watching the movie countless times, I still look with delight at Om telling Shanti to reach out for the things she deserves, as Om stands on the Filmfare stage in 2007 and accepted a reward he had wanted with all his heart, so much that the entire universe conspired to bring it to him.
It is this speech, the reward speech, that shapes the heart of a film more than the scenes of drama, love or revenge. There is simply a desire for accomplishment, a need so great that even the universe bends the laws to provide it to you. And there is the implication that this desire exists within each of us because we all have the potential to achieve our unique wishes. Maybe they won’t be as drastic as Oms, but they exist nonetheless in small variations in our daily life like meeting friends by coincidence. Om says our lives are like movies with happy endings, that things get better as we move and live, and while more and more things get in our way, we learn to smooth them out too. I liked to believe in it when I was five years old, and 13 years later, I still believe in it.
MiC columnist Safura Syed can be contacted at [email protected]
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