Om Shanti Om – Part 2
The other main characters are the ambitious movie producer Mukesh “Call me Mike. Everybody in Hollywood does.” Mehra, Om’s younger brother, Om’s mother and others, all of whom do excellent jobs. Nobody is poorly or badly cast.
So we find Khan as Om Prakesh, junior artiste “extra” in American English, yearning to be a hero “star” in American English and hopelessly in love with the beautiful Shanti who is already a star.
They’re together briefly in a scene where Om attends the premiere of her latest movie. A thread from her beautiful gown catches on his sleeve, and so he’s treated to a brief moment with eye to eye contact with her. And the song for this scene, Aankhon Mein Teri, is incredible. It really captures Shanti’s ethereal beauty and Om’s love for her.
Yes, yes, it’s very romantic, but the movie does get darker.
One day the movie company is shooting a scene where the heroine is trapped by fire. Somehow the fire the production crews sets gets out of control, and Shanti is really trapped. Nobody wants to risk their own life to rescue her except, of course, Om, who jumps over the flames, picks her up and gets her to safety, though he’s burned in the process.
This is a smart way to get Om and Shanti together, because it also foreshadows the movie’s turning point.
To thank him for saving her life, Shanti goes out with him on dinner date where, of course, there’s plenty of romantic singing and dancing.
Om begins to believe he actually has a chance with the beautiful star until, disturbed by a fan magazine, Shanti walks past him. He follows, and overhears a conversation that shakes him to the core. She is secretly married to the producer. Not only that, she’s pregnant. It’s all a secret they’re keeping because, apparently, knowing their favorite actress was already married would interfere with her popularity and end her career.
Yet the fan magazine had announced that the producer was engaged to the daughter of a wealthy man.
It’s just to get the money to finance his next movie, Om Shanti Om, starring her, he tells her.
He’s building the largest, most expensive movie set in the world, just for her to star in.
When it’s finished, she and the producer go there, with Om secretly close behind. The producer promises Shanti he’ll announce their wedding and goes into great detail about how they’ll have a wonderful wedding celebration, making her very happy, until he drops the mask . . .
The following scene is horrifying to watch and is the turning point in the movie.
Thirty years later, Om — reincarnated as the son of a famous actor — is now a famous actor himself. This version of Om, however, is rude, arrogant and totally spoiled. Khan takes some chances here because he plays someone who can only be fairly described as an asshole.
But he has problems. An elderly woman keeps stalking him, crying and claiming he’s her long lost son, Om. WTF!
He begins to be haunted by voices he doesn’t understand. He visits the long ago abandoned movie studio that burned down thirty years ago, and is greatly disturbed by how familiar its wreckage is.
When he stands at the door to the burned Om Shanti Om set, he practically has a seizure as he hallucinates flames inside, and the face of a beautiful woman looking out at him, pleading for his, and he’s helpless to save her.
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