Om Shanti Om

Farah Khan has directed many amazing movies since she began her career, but I think Om Shanti Om (2007) has been one of her better works. It is a smooth combination of almost every emotion possible, a classic example of Bollywood’s famous “navras” theme. This movie does not address any serious social or political issues; instead, it focuses on the stereotypical Hindi cinema and its famous actors over the years.
The storyline of this movie is both unoriginal and very new. Although not an exact copy, the story is based off of the 1980 movie Karz (Subhash Ghai), in which a woman kills her husband after acquiring his wealth. This man comes back as a famous singer, and the rest of the story is very similar to the second half of Om Shanti Om. In my opinion, this older version of the story was not as cheesy and dramatic as the newer version is. It does not include the incredibly unbelievable plot twist of a man being born with the same exact name and face as the man he was in his previous life. This, I thought, was the weak point of Om Shanti Om. However, the originality of the film made up for this; making fun of Indian movies at the same time as conforming to their standards is not an easy feat, but these aspects put together made for an excellent film. What made it better was the fact that, the more you know about Bollywood, the more sense the movie makes.
The actors in the movie were the strongest point, in my opinion. Not only did “King Khan” (SRK) play two roles in the film, but actress Deepika Padukone made a debut and exceeded everyone’s expectations with her flawless performance and great on-screen chemistry with Shah Rukh. Along with these two, there were countless movie stars that made an appearance in the movie. For some, this was simply a publicity technique; for others, it was their chance to come back after disappearing from Bollywood for years. For example, during the song sequence right after Om Kapoor wins the Best Actor award ("Deewangi Deewangi"), a few old actors such as Dharmendra and Rekha did a small dance as a tribute to their own years spent in Bollywood. Also during this song, many of today's most popular actors did their own parts in the dance to contribute to Hindi cinema's increasing talent and their devoted fans. I thought this song was exciting for this reason, and I also really enjoyed the other songs in the movie; almost every one of them had colorful and fun dances to make them even better. A big contribution to this film's success was the innovative idea of making Om and Shanti seem as old as they are supposed to be by putting SRK and Deepika into scenes from multiple old movies. This was creative and new for Inda, and it gave the movie a new dimension.
For the reasons stated above, Om Shanti Om was able to appeal to both young and older audiences. Other than a little bit of controversy over the ethics of disrespecting old Bollywood actors (such as Manoj Kumar), this movie was an overall success. It was an old story renewed and made somewhat "modern" while still sticking to the roots of Bollywood culture. Although its drama aspect was over the top in some parts, I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to anyone who is willing to test their knowledge of Hindi cinema.