''Om Dar-B-Dar'' (Hindi: ओम-दर-ब-दर) is a 1988 Indian
Hindi
Hindi ( Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been ...
Ajmer
Ajmer is one of the major and oldest cities in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the centre of the eponymous Ajmer District. It is located at the centre of Rajasthan. It is also known as heart of Rajasthan. The city was established as "' ...
and
Pushkar
Pushkar is a city and headquarters of Pushkar tehsil in the Ajmer district in the Indian state of Rajasthan. It is situated about northwest of Ajmer and about southwest of Jaipur.nonlinear narrative and an absurdist story line to satirise mythology, arts, politics and philosophy. The film won the
Filmfare Critics Award for Best Movie
The Filmfare Critics Award for Best Film is awarded during annual Filmfare Awards, given by the Filmfare magazine.
The awards are the oldest and most prominent film awards given for Hindi films in India. The yearly awards started in 1954. Mo ...
in 1989.
It was never commercially released in India, though it achieved success in International Film Festivals, including
Berlin
Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...
where it premiered, and it soon became a cult film. In 2013,
National Film Development Corporation of India
The National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) based in Mumbai is the central agency established in 1975, to encourage high quality Indian cinema. It functions in areas of film financing, production and distribution and under Ministr ...
(NFDC) had planned an official national release of a digitally restored print of the film. The film finally released in Indian theaters after 26 years, on 17 January 2014.
Synopsis
''Om-Dar-B-Dar'' is a portrait of life in
Ajmer
Ajmer is one of the major and oldest cities in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the centre of the eponymous Ajmer District. It is located at the centre of Rajasthan. It is also known as heart of Rajasthan. The city was established as "' ...
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 he is really outstanding
in his skill and ability to hold his breath for a long time.
Cast
* Anita Kanwar as Phoolkumari
* Gopi Desai as Gayatri
*
Lalit Tiwari
Lalit Tiwari is an Indian film and television actor. His best-known television roles are that of Sanjaya in the series '' Mahabharat'' (1988–1990), and the one in the historical television series '' Bharat Ek Khoj - The Discovery of India'' ...
as Jagdish
* Bhairavchandra Sharma
* Lakshminarayan Shastri as Om's Father
* Ramesh Mathur
* Aditya Lakhia as Om
* Manish Gupta as young Om
* Peter Morris Messe
Release
The film was made on a budget of Rs. 10 lakhs. It had its premiere at the
Berlin International Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the fest ...
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 as 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
The National Film Development Corporation of India (NFDC) based in Mumbai is the central agency established in 1975, to encourage high quality Indian cinema. It functions in areas of film financing, production and distribution and under Ministr ...
(NFDC). Eventually, the digitally restored version was released on 17 January 2014, by PVR Cinemas in metro cities.
Themes
The movie was described by its director Kamal Swaroop as a story of Lord
Brahma
Brahma ( sa, ब्रह्मा, Brahmā) is a Hindu god, referred to as "the Creator" within the Trimurti, the trinity of supreme divinity that includes Vishnu, and Shiva.Jan Gonda (1969)The Hindu Trinity Anthropos, Bd 63/64, H 1/2, pp. 21 ...
, 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. 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."
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 music, number refers to an individual song, dance, or instrumental piece which is part of a larger work of musical theatre, opera, or oratorio. It can also refer either to an individual song in a published collection or an individual song or d ...
in
Bollywood
Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...
cinema, many of which don't do anything to move the story forward, but are instead used as an escapist "break" from the storyline.
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 30 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''. 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-B-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." 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
Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...
film-making.
Director Imtiaz Ali mentioned the vast amount of influence that the film had on aspiring independent directors in Indian cinema, stating that ''Om-Dar-B-Dar'' is "like old wine" and "antiquated because of the 25-year delay in its release".
Director Anurag Kashyap also mentioned in 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-B-Dar''.
Producer
Kiran Rao
Kiran Rao (born 7 November 1973) is an Indian film producer, screenwriter, and director who works in Hindi cinema. In 2016, Rao co-founded Paani Foundation, a non-profit organisation working towards the mission of fighting drought in Maharasht ...
recalled watching the film on a
VCD
Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the ...
which came with a bad print and poor sound quality, yet being able to somehow stitch the missing bits in her head, which she noted was also a great way to watch a film.
This film has been categorized by Amrit Gangar as a Cinema of Prayoga film.