Movie: Hey Ram

Actors: Kamal Haasan
Director: Kamal Haasan, Producer:



This is a serious movie which tries to show that bad Hindus kill good Muslims and vice versa while the Surds get into the action when the camera pans their way, and it has nothing to do with social or economic status. Other than that it has a whole lot of actors from the arty crowd and some who, now out of work, wish they were in the arty crowd. It is also a movie about Iyengars from Madras and Bengalis from Calcutta and undefined Muslims who from their speech patterns are probably from St. Columba`s school in Gole Market. Britishers from Larkana Cantt. and a Kannadiga pimp who is not very convincing but adds the humour bit round off. All of them speak anything or anyway but the way they should speak, but who cares?



I mean, can ShahRukh Khan speak in Urdu? Did his folks own Azad Transport, featured in a cameo?



So why did people go to see the movie?



Maybe it has a woman dressed in sheer muslin under a waterfall with her glories showing, which is why zealots of all hues are trying to burn cinema halls. Or maybe it was because there was nobody in the hall. Except us. Whatever, this movie is not about a huge big American truck charging down at you powered by the same engine that sent Apollo-11 into outer space. Nor is it an advertisement for soap, though it does come close to making some sort of statement for Lever brothers by showing an old Pears calendar to mark the date, 30th of January, 1948.



Obviously set to show us that Karachi was a sort of swinging first cousin to Beirut and that both were in awe of Calcutta, this is also a movie about how Naseeruddin Shah will do anything to play Ben Kingsley, even restructure his ears to catch rainwater for those fasting days. Then it is a movie for Kamal Hassan to kiss as many pretty women as there are in the movie as possible (two, and both become his wives but at different times) and haath maro another one when he thought the camera was not looking (one, Amjad alias Shah Rukh Khan`s wife). In between, we see both of them three naked under sheets and see one of him in long underpants when we would rather see both of her in short thin ones, preferably the new rope types we see in movies about California.



I would not know, all I see is sleep deprived desi types when I go to California.



It is also a movie trying to tell us that secularism was fashionable before 1947. Married to a grassy knoll theory of a possible second back-up assassin who gets the jitters at the end, when trying to stick it to Mahatma Gandhi, who gets to lean on the other pretty girls in the movie. In between there are some snazzy computer driven shots of Hitler and stuff but a timid camera fails to grab the canvas so we are left with a series of tight shots, whatever that means, I don`t know, some editors from a tv company sitting in front of me said so.



So what is the review, then, if this is the preamble? OK- here goes, because you are too cheap to buy the pirated CVD/DVD. Kamal Hassan is Saket Ram, ShahRukh Khan is his ace buddy Amjad Ali Khan, Saurabh Shukla is their Sindhi buddy Lalwani. All three get rogered during partition, but Saket goes psycho when Altaf the tailor rapes and kills his wife Aparna, played by Rani Mukherjee who cannot kiss to save her life but takes her clothes off quite fast. Modern times, I guess. They also have Hema Malini without a horse but looking very demure all the same, what she is doing in the movie, nobody knows.



The movie meanders through some history and some fiction about the Mahatma Gandhi assassination, and ends with Tushar Gandhi, the real great-grandson, playing himself.



Why I liked this movie and want a lot of people to see it: because it does not tell us history as written by Congress Party or Jinnah. It also tells us that we are fools and have not been able to change anything in the last 53 years. And most of all, it has some great non-intrusive music by Illayaraja and the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra.



In the end, Gandhi dies. Sorry I told you. So does Saket Ram alias Kamal Hassan, because he doesn`t want to kiss the old ladies anymore, though he does try it with the nurse when alone with her in an underground crypt. The nurse is pretty, and I think she was wearing small chaddies like in California.



My future reviews of Hindi movies, in no fixed pattern other than when I feel like it or on special request, will mark them by how many times I fell asleep and was nudged awake when moving into deep snore mode. This was a one snore post interval, which ranks it quite high on a personal top line where my shippie batchmates have left me asleep for the next two shows at Jagadamba in Vizag during Sholay/1976.



And they had Hema Malini with a horse in that one.