#omkara

Bhardwaj doesn't try to sanitise Shakespeare for Bollywood, instead he lets the moral decay rot right through the surface, as jealousy - of love and power - is a byproduct of centuries of entrenched social hierarchy rather than just a personal flaw.

Dolly (Kareena Kapoor) in Omkara portrays the wiltng Desdemona as a perfect combination of laughter, love and naivety. But perhaps Dolly was always doomed in a system that rarely lets women speak without suspicion, where their loyalty is both demanded and distrusted. Her love was never enough to clear her name because the trial was never fair to begin with. Her tragedy is that she doesn't just fall (like Omkara/Othello himself), but she is pushed, cruelly, by the very hands she tried to hold. Konkona Sen Sharma's Indu (Emilia) becomes the personification of this point - the memory and prophecy of what happens when women are not believed.