Guardian Unlimited
A matter of caste as Bollywood embraces the Bard
Big budget remake of Othello - with song and dance - starts new trend
Randeep Ramesh in Delhi Saturday July 29, 2006 The Guardian
The Bard arrived in Bollywood yesterday with the release of the first big-budget cinema version of a Shakespeare play in India: Omkara, an adaptation of Othello.
Instead of the Moor of Venice, the film's central character is a political strongman in the badlands of north India. Translated into Hindi, the film's writers say they have been faithful to the story of a warrior hero who is innocent in love and hence vulnerable to the treachery of his companion-in-arms.
The play's universal themes, they say, have merely been transported to an Indian setting. "The jealousy, the plotting and the tragedy are all still there in Omkara. What has changed is that we have tried to make [Othello] understandable to an Indian audience," says Abhishek Chaubey, who co-wrote the film.
Most notable is that Othello's racial difference becomes one of caste in India. Omkara is a muscle man born of a low caste mother who has emerged as the local leader of a Brahmin party. He is set to marry a "fair" daughter of a powerful political chieftain.
"Omkara is literally a 'half-caste' ruffian who has become a leader. Because of the insecurity about whether he is accepted or not, everything is destroyed for him. It's the same in Othello," says Chaubey.
The film stars some of India's biggest actors. Kareena Kapoor, whose career has rested on a string of romantic leads, plays the role adapted from Desdemona. One of Bollywood's leading men, Saif Ali Khan, also departs from his trademark romeo roles to take on a limping, scheming Iago. And the veteran Bollywood heartthrob, Ajay Devgan, is the character adapted from Othello.
Bollywood is better known for producing lavish song-and-dance routines than the raging emotions of Othello. But Omkara mixes the two by making one of the characters a chanteuse who belts out songs in dingy bars.
The film's crew were behind the previous attempt at adapting Shakespeare for Indian cinema, transplanting Macbeth from the Scottish highlands into the Mumbai underworld. Considered an arthouse movie, Maqbool garnered critical and commercial success.
"Omkara is much more ambitious. It has big stars, it is a mainstream format. It is not arthouse," Anupama Chopra, film critic with India Today, said after watching Omkara. "I am not sure they realised what [the filmmakers] sought to achieve, but you have to applaud their ambition."
Bollywood appears to be in the mood for Shakespeare. Versions of Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream are also in the offing. Academics say that this is a radical departure for modern Indian cinema. "We have only had three [Indian] movies in the last decade and that includes Omkara," said Rajiv Verma, professor of English at Delhi University and vice-president of the country's Shakespeare society.
Professor Verma says that previously there was a lack of screenwriters in commercial cinema who knew and read Shakespeare.
"There were a few exceptions, like the big hit Dil Chata Hai, which looked at the conflict between romantic love and male bonding. It was an unacknowledged remake of Much Ado About Nothing, but the only clue was that in one shot there was a boat in a harbour that was clearly named Much Ado," said Prof Verma.
Bollywood, he says, is mimicking Hollywood. "In the 1990s Hollywood went through a phase of adapting Shakespeare. Those have been seen by young Indian filmmakers who want to do the same."
One of these is 37-year-old Onir (known by only one name), who dealt with homosexuality in his first Bollywood film My Brother Nikhil. He is currently reworking Hamlet for Indian cinema. Onir says he will try to push the envelope by tackling the "near-Oedipal" relationship Hamlet has with his mother. "It is almost incestuous. But I have to face the fact that my audience is Indian and deal with it sensibly. But it is definitely going to be in the film."