Om Shanti Om

Sabrina Lee
Laura Brueck
Review #5
May 3rd, 2010
Om Shanti Om
A film that debuted to wild success not just due to the presence of Shahruku Kahn, but almost every major star in Hindi cinema, Om Shanti Om is one of the more interesting and certainly fun films of the selection in the semester. The first time in Hindi films there is a ghost takes place in this film as far as anyone in the class seemed able to figure out, this seemed like a hint of western influence, but Shanti's ghost also followed a slightly trite plot one might find in the west. That fact took away some of the interest in the character of the ghost, given she plays a very small part during the beginning and only shows up later to help the hero who got to be reincarnated finish off the evil producer. Some conventions of Bollywood films are broken, such as women being vengeful and taking out their spite in a murderous form, but this seems all tied to our old friend the evil influence of the west and America which shows in how OK later acts, and how the producer always behaves so wickedly in the tie to his western and apparently evil counterparts that are never seen. The only way the west is shown tends to be through OK and his backup dancers, and the two bald men he seems to own as bodyguards. How camp the movie is in this case happens to be half the fun especially when they are filming the fake movie that OK stars in as a cripple that somehow starts to dance in the middle. The songs were enjoyable, and the one following the Filmfare awards simply seemed like a fun excuse to get as many stars as possible together to enjoy themselves and make sort of a party for the industry as a spectacle. The end of the film has no wedding, there is no real love story after the main characters die, as OK has a singular mind, but it still feels like a very large rip on the Hindi film experience as seen by the people who make the world's biggest film industry possible.