Rao’s taut, sharp performance adds heft to Mehta’s uneven film
Omerta is an honourable film, but it often looses track of itself as it goes off on tangents that are both obscure and feeble. If a lesser actor were carrying it, Omerta would have been just an earnest but insufferable film.
When done well, ambiguity can be the stuff of great cinema, one that keeps its hooks into us for years. And as a film’s worldview, ambiguity can be the hallmark of political maturity, or simply the fact that rather than peddling an ideological package borrowed from a state, a party or a group, it is one’s own.
Hansal Mehta is not lacking in ambition. And his politics is always interesting. It makes us think.
But somewhere, since his lasersharp Shahid, his grip over his own stories has been loosening.
In pursuit of either a brilliant cinematic moment or a powerful message, he loses tract of the story he wants to tell, and his message gets lost in his muddled telling.
Omerta is an honourable film, but it often looses track of itself as it goes off on tangents that are both obscure and feeble. If a lesser actor were carrying it,
Omerta would have been just an earnest but insufferable film.
Rajkummar Rao’s taut, sharp performance shines bright and gives the film heft and personality it otherwise lacks. O
merta opens with a dark screen and a scream. We don’t know who screamed, where. The film tells the story of Britishborn Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh (played here by Rajkummar Rao), now 44 and waiting for a response to his plea against his death sentence in Karachi Jail.
It tracks his journey from LSE to kidnapping four foreigners in Delhi, from getting arrested by Delhi Police to being one of the three terrorists freed by the then BJP government in exchange for the lives of passengers on board the hijacked IC814, from kidnapping and then killing Daniel Pearl to making crank calls to Pervez Musharraf from jail.
Posing as President Pranab Mukherjee during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, Omar threatened war, leading Pakistan to scramble military aircraft over Islamabad and Rawalpindi.
In the subcontinent, it doesn’t get more dramatic than that. H ansal Mehta has said in interviews that in Omerta he wanted to explore and depict evil as a human characteristic, but since he is not, thankfully, a jingoistic white film director from America, his Indian lefty-liberal leanings show in his telling of this story.
His ambiguity towards his subject, in fact, is clearly reflected in the title he’s picked for his film.
Omerta is an Italian word that literally means “among the mafia”, but is also the code the mafia live by — keeping silent and not cooperating with the police against their own.
The mafia, yakuza, uniformed Armymen, spies — this code is followed and honoured by all. Because telling is a sign of weakness, cowardice. And not squealing despite torture a potent virtue.
While exploring Omar’s hatred for America, Britain, other Anglo-Saxon nations and India, Mehta’s screenplay and film are unable to see it in isolation. There is cause, and jihad is its effect. Mehta offers no justification, of course, for terrorist activities. Just presents some facts that get exploited by many.
While this makes the film’s politics refreshing and interesting, it’s also where Omerta gets lost.
Mehta is in control when he is presenting and filling out Omar with brush strokes both wide and minute. Omar is an intelligent, modern young man who is also a devout Muslim. He’s attached to his father, but also focused on saving “his people”. He can be charming, but is diabolic. Above all, he is chuffed by his own cunning.
But, as the film explores the causes behind his hatred for “infidels”, and travels to Bosnia through newspaper clips, it does so in manner that’s inept and dull.
Omar’s anger and hatred, born out of atrocities committed far away but internalised thanks to a certain bend in his personality and some indoctrination, is not presented either with imagination, drama or cinematic skill. It’s documented through a protest here, a newspaper clip there.
There are many stories, tangents the film could have picked.
Omar was also, allegedly, an MI6 recruit who went rogue. There have been reports of dysfunction, anger and violence since his school days. And there is always Kashmir. Mehta doesn’t use many of the flashy facts available, opting for, instead, Serbs killing Bosnians. Howsoever eminent and ethical, it is a dead zone in an Indian film, especially if it’s presented through news clippings stuck on A4 sheets. O merta, no doubt, has some very powerful, eerie moments. And as far as its politics is concerned, I found Mehta’s liberal conflict very interesting.
Omar’s conversations with his father show us secular, liberal Islam we don’t often see on our screens.
Mehta also injects politics and comment through real footage, and the one of Atal Behari Vajpayee indicts the BJP and its hypocritical brand of chest-thumping nationalism which whimpers in the face of a real challenge.
We see the connect he is trying to make with Pearl’s killing, but then he leaves out the Amritsar idiocy. Had he included that, it could have brought some passion and urgency to the proceedings. R ajkummar Rao has said in interviews that while preparing for his role, he had a scary moment when he caught himself praising the Paris attacks of November 2015. “Well done,” he found himself thinking.
Rao’s Omar is egoistic, proud, bigoted, and carries malevolence as a badge of honour.
Rao’s demeanour flits between a hesitant but affable man trying to strike a friendship, and a menacing, martial masculinity. That he is able to make his transition in a split second is stunning.
With sudden rigidity to his spine, jaw and intent he pulls off some very intense scenes, including the ones with Pearl. The killing, butchering scene is really tough to watch. And tougher to forget.
He also speaks in several accents here and all were perfect. His Hindi as an Indian-Britisher is distinct from his Urdu when he’s in Pakistan.
Rajkummar Rao gave his all to Mehta’s Omerta.
All Omerta needed from Mehta was a little more passion, some more focus. — SS