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Almost everywhere I’ve been in the last couple of weeks, people have asked searching questions about Omkara. Is it any good? Does it really have so much bad language that you can’t take kids? And so on.

Vishal Bharadwaj, lyricist and director, is finally in the limelight. It may not be the kind of buzz that a Yash Chopra or a Karan Johar film generates, but it’s there. The reason for this sudden upsurge in public interest is clear: this is the first time Bharadwaj has worked with major league stars. Ajay Devgan, Kareena Kapoor, Saif Ali Khan, even Bipasha Basu, have lifted the profile of the film and its director. Suddenly, the man who made Makdee, Maqbool, and the unreleased Blue Umbrella, has made an enviable entry into drawing room conversations.

Two weeks after its release, Omkara is being treated by the trade with mixed feelings. In Mumbai, the first week collections were a not-so-great 60 per cent; in Uttar Pradesh, where the film is set, theatres were barely full; and in Delhi, theatres and multiplexes are still getting ‘decent’ crowds. According to a PVR spokesperson, it has done quite well in Punjab, but is far from being blockbuster material.

Part of the problem is being ascribed to the film’s cost, which, a New Delhi exhibitor says, was too high: the Delhi-UP distributor reportedly paid Rs 3 crore. That’s the kind of figure that only a Shah Rukh or an Aamir film can demand and get. The collections, he says, have been par for the course for a film of this kind.

From Bharadwaj’s trajectory from Makdee (2002) - his first film - to now, it is apparent that he has covered a lot of ground fairly rapidly. The biggest star Makdee, about a little girl and a witch, could boast of was Shabana Azmi. She plays the wicked witch, all matted hair and gnarled nails, with the kind of relish only she can. Shweta Prasad, who plays her chief adversary, was very good (Shweta went on to do Iqbal), and it was nice to see children being themselves, not preachy poppets. For a debut, it was a nice effort, even if it didn’t get the climax it deserved.

His next, Maqbool, took him less than two years, and is one of the best films we’ve seen in a long, long time. It was Shakespeare’s Macbeth transported to grimy, crime-ridden contemporary Mumbai, done in a dramatic, marvellously baroque style the Bard himself would have been proud of - full of overweening ambitions, dark secrets, and tortured souls. Macbeth becomes Maqbool, played by Irrfan, and Shakespeare’s doomed king and queen become Pankaj Kapoor and Tabu.

The locations, the sets, the cinematography, and the performances were all superb. Kapoor’s head mafia man, who is old but reluctant to hand over charge to a younger Irrfan, who is in thrall to Tabu, Kapoor’s consort, is memorable. And both Irrfan and Tabu prove all over again why they are the most exciting actors currently working in Bollywood.

The interplay between the lead characters, and a great ensemble cast, is essential to the plot, and shows us a director fully in control of his near-perfect material. If only Bharadwaj had done the end better (the Godfather strokes were fine, but somehow it all became unforgivably lax), he would have had a masterpiece on his hands.

Omkara doesn’t quite have the Maqbool feel, not just because it has been set in western UP, which, linguistically and culturally, may be on another planet. Its potential impact has been diluted because of its stars. Ajay Devgan, as Saif Ali Khan has said in an interview, was born to play Omkara (who else can you think of with just that right mix of gentleness and explosive anger?), but Devgan doesn’t do much with the role that he hasn’t done before.

It is the same with Kareena. Her blinding fairness contrasted with Devgan’s swarthiness is perfect for the role, but there’s not much else going on with her attempt to play down the starry persona and get into another skin.

The only actor who does that is Saif Ali Khan. For the role, he had to shave his head (he’s gone on record several times to say that he was very reluctant to do it, but was glad that Bharadwaj persuaded him to do so), stain his teeth, remember to walk with a limp, and learn to use the filthiest of abuses.

The first line of the movie, which proudly uses a common abusive word from that part of the world, but almost never in mainstream movies, is Saif’s, and the flair with which he rolls it out, tells us that he is not only game for this, but much more. It’s quite a feat for someone with his background to be able to appear and sound coarse without going over the top. His Langda Tyagi (the villainous Iago) is a class act, and the best he has ever been.

Stars can both be good and bad things: anyone who has been associated with the film industry for even a brief while can tell you this. Maqbool gave us actors who are more actors than stars in performances that astonish in the way they have interpreted the character, or the director’s vision of the character, without putting a foot wrong.

Ajay is a star and an actor; Kareena is more star than actor. But both, by not being able to step completely into their characters, make Omkara less than what it could have been.

In Blue Umbrella, his wonderful film based on Ruskin Bond’s story of the same name, Bharadwaj is back to pure actors. The film, which has been waiting to be released, will hopefully be out by Diwali, according to producers UTV. It tells a story with honesty, with integrity, without bothering about star images. And it is, indisputably, his best.