Om-Dar-B-Dar

Om Dar-B-Dar

Theatrical Poster
Directed by Kamal Swaroop
Produced by National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC)
Written by Kuku (dialogue)
Starring Anita Kanwar
Aditya Lakhia
Gopi Desai
Manish Gupta
Music by Rajat Dholakia
Kuku (lyrics)
Cinematography Ashwin Kaul
Milind Ranade
Edited by Ravi Gupta
Priya Krishnaswamy
Distributed by PVR Pictures
Director's Rare
Release dates
  • 12 February 1988 (1988-02-12) (Berlin)
  • 17 January 2014 (2014-01-17) (India)
Running time
 101 minutes
Country India
Language Hindi
Budget ₹10 lakh (US$15,000)[1]

Om Dar-B-Dar is a 1988 Indian postmodernist film directed by Kamal Swaroop and starring Anita Kanwar, Aditya Lakhia and Gopi Desai in lead roles. The film, about the adventures of a school boy named Om along with his family, is set in Ajmer and Pushkar in Rajasthan, and employs nonlinear narrative and an absurdist storyline to satire mythology, arts, politics and philosophy.[2] The film won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie in 1989.

It was never commercially released in India, though it achieved success in International Film Festivals including Berlin where it premiered, and soon became a cult film. In 2013, National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) had planned an official national release of a digitally restored print of the film.[3][4] The film finally released in Indian theaters after 26 years, on 17 January 2014.[5]

Synopsis

Om-Dar-B-Dar is a portrait of life in Ajmer town, Rajasthan. The film tells the story of a young boy named Om in the period of his carefree adolescence and its harsh disillusions. The story starts as a comedy and ends as a thriller. Om has a rather strange family. His father, Babuji, a government employee, leaves his job so that he can dedicate himself to astrology; Om's older sister, Gayatri, is dating a good-for-nothing fellow. Om is involved in science, but is also attracted to magic and religion. In all it seems that his really outstanding skill is his ability to hold his breath for a long time.

Cast

Release

The film was made on a budget of Rs. 10 lakhs.[1] It had its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988, and was played at the film festival circuit and even became a cult film. However it was never commercially released in India, only a video release. The film received renewed attention when it was screened at Experimenta, an experimental film festival in Mumbai in 2005. Thereafter, it went into a digital restoration project funded by the National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC). Eventually, the digitally-restored version was released on 17 January 2014, by PVR Cinemas in metro cities.[1]

Themes

The movie was described by its director Kamal Swaroop as a story of Lord Brahma, and it sprouted from the idea that in Hinduism, although Lord Brahma was considered the father of the entire universe, strangely no one ever worshiped him.[6] Swaroop also said that the film's script was written based solely on dreams and images that he had and claimed he "cannot think in words."[6]

Soundtrack

The songs by Swaroop's assistant, Kuku, are sporadic and choppy and don't make any logical sense, and are used tongue-in-cheek as mocking the tradition of spontaneous songs and musical numbers in Bollywood cinema, many of which don't do anything to move the story forward but are instead used as an escapist "break" from the storyline.[7]

Legacy

Although the film was never released or seen in India during its initial rounds at the film festivals, Om-Dar-B-Dar has in the past 20 years gained a huge cult following and fame amongst film critics, scholars, industry insiders and cinephiles alike. One of the first serious articles about the film was written on the film blog The Seventh Art.[7] The blog stated, "Swaroop’s film is an antithesis to whatever is recognized globally as Indian cinema – a reason good enough to make Om-Dar-Ba-Dar a must-see movie" and that the movie can be defined as many things, the most popular of them "the great Indian LSD trip."[7] The film can also be looked at as a jab at mainstream Indian cinema, and many of the themes and images in the film are direct satires of conventions of Bollywood filmmaking.[7]

Director Imtiaz Ali mentioned the vast amount of influence that the film had on aspiring independent directors in Indian cinema, stating that Om-Dar-Ba-Dar is "like old wine" and "antiquated because of the 25-year delay in its release".[8]

Director Anurag Kashyap also mentioned on his film blog that in his directorial venture Dev.D, the song "Emotional Attyachar" was inspired in its music and staging from the song "Meri Jaan" in Om-Dar-Ba-Dar.[9]

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Cult film Om-Dar-Ba-Dar finally comes up for air". Livemint. 25 November 2013. Retrieved 2014-01-16.
  2. ↑ "Om Darbadar". The Sunday Guardian. 22 Jan 2012. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
  3. ↑ "Eating Oscar for Lunch?". Tehelka. 2013-09-21 , Issue 38 Volume 10. Retrieved 2013-09-16. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ↑ "'80s classic gets a new lease of life". Ahmedabad Mirror. 20 July 2013. Retrieved 2013-09-16.
  5. ↑ "Om-Dar-Ba-Dar to Finally Release". DearCinema. 2014-01-14. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
  6. 1 2 "I Became Dadasaheb Phalke". DearCinema. 2014-01-14. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
  7. 1 2 3 4 "Flashback #63: Om Darbadar (1988)". The Seventh Art. 11 July 2009. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
  8. ↑ "Imtiaz Ali". YouTube. 2014-01-14. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
  9. ↑ "Anurag Kashyap". Anurag Kashyap's Blog. 2008-12-01. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
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