#AskBR – Hey Ram (20th anniversary)

Posted on February 18, 2020

In which I answer a few questions on an older film… or a new one… or talk about actors and directors… or take on a few YouTube comments…

For more, subscribe to FILM COMPANION SOUTH: http://bit.ly/2xoNult

Copyright ©2020 Film Companion.

Posted in: #AskBR / #QnA, Cinema: Hindi, Cinema: Tamil

25 Responses “#AskBR – Hey Ram (20th anniversary)” →

H. Prasanna

February 18, 2020

I can’t wait for MANK and other BR veterans to weigh in on this intellectual fever dream of a AskBR on an intellectual fever dream of a film

Readers Write In #44: Hey Ram : A Look Back

@BR Well put about the unreliable narration; it was something I always pondered about since I saw Hey Ram. The plot does not come together in any meaningful way and one thing plays into another to create elaborate set pieces that try to work out the psyche of a man at a tumultuous time in history.

LikeLike
Aman

February 18, 2020

Hey Ram, weren’t you fanboying over Hey Ram sir. Makes me want to revisit it again tomorrow.

LikeLike
AdhithyaKR

February 19, 2020

Have never seen BR talk so fast – Would make for a good rap if edited well. 😋 A densely packed session about a densely packed movie!

The discussion of the (lack of) character arcs was fresh… Reason to appreciate Kamal’s grasp and subversion of storytelling even more. 🙂

LikeLiked by 2 people
Dora

February 19, 2020

I loved the movie, watched it a bunch of times. I have listed below the reasons why I think the movie failed commercially (I watched it in the theater in Chennai and the comments below are also based on what I heard from people in the audience)

The cringey romance scenes with Rani

The ramar aanaalum song which was just plain boring

The scene in the club before the above song where everyone speaks in accented tamil, really painful on the ears and the reasoning for each character from various parts of undivided India speaking Tamil seemed contrived; the characters could have just spoken in english , considering there were significant scenes in the movie almost fully in english

Atul Kulkarni’s brilliant award winning performance was sadly lost on the early audiences, again because of the Tamil problem; I enjoyed his performance during later viewings with subtitles

The first three negatives were piled into the first twenty minutes of the movie, I saw people leaving the theater and word of mouth publicity was terrible. Ironically, once you get past this, to the scene when Saket heads out in his motorcycle trying to buy some food….man….The movie was fantastic! I sound like a total fan girl, but seriously there were were so many moments of cinematic brilliance –

when Saket and Shriram first meet and the latter introduces himself with Abivaadhaye

The various scenes with the elephants

Every scene with the tambram family

Sharukh , yes , even his Tamil

I would love to hear your thoughts.

LikeLiked by 1 person
Heisenberg

February 19, 2020

@BR – I felt you were stretching the unreliable narrator/hallucination too far. Of course, Saket Ram has lot of hallucinations from his young days to death bed, but ‘he may not have even been there while gandhi was assasinated’ is taking it too far.

The way I see it is – Some part of his hallucinations were really hallucination while some were for audience sake as to say what was going on in his mind (like lizard on water reminding of aparna or the blind young girl who haunts him).

His grandson considered him as unreliable narrator because Saket always narrated story in first person. Given his state of mind after all that he had gone through and his story being as wild as it can get, his grandson could not believe everything he said. But by the end of the movie his grandson comes to the realization his stories may be true, after finding Gandhi’s slipper in his room – which IMO establishes Saket was indeed present when Gandhi was assassinated.

As for the kamalism I loved – Old saket who has been lowered underground asks what’s the problem outside and gets an answer Hindu-Muslim fight. He says “Innuma?” 20 years later now he’s asking that in public life.

LikeLiked by 2 people
Heisenberg

February 19, 2020

OT – Hariharan’s rendition of Isaiyil Thodangudhamma – I found it surprising that Ilaiyaraaja who is very strict and makes singers perform exactly like the original composition (even with SPB), gives great liberty to Hariharan to play with this composition. And more surprising is him enjoying Hariharan’s mastery and applauding at the end. Never seen Ilaiyaraaja appreciate a younger talent this much

LikeLike
Dora

February 19, 2020

BR sir – my earlier comments were entered before I watched your YouTube video. I wanted to get my thoughts off my chest without being influenced by your opinions. I just watched your video now. OMG! This is literally the best ever askbr that you have ever done. I really really wish Kamal takes the time to watch this. Your interpretation is just incredible; I actually had to pause the video and take a moment when you said “the piano has a character arc”. I didn’t realize this even after watching the movie twenty times. Ok, fan girling done, I am off to watch Hey ram for the 21st time.

LikeLiked by 2 people
MANK

February 19, 2020

Prasanna, this is my latest

Hey Ram: In Kamal Haasan’s modern Ramayana, Lord Ram turns Travis Bickle in a quixotic quest for vengeance against Gandhi

I think Kamal was trying to do with this film what Mani Rathnam very successfully did with thalapathi and not very successfully with raavanan, which is to use our familiarity with the epic to skip some part of plot and character development, which explains some of the gaps in Saket’s characterisation. Abhayankar just drops into Saket Ram’s presence just as Hanuman does when Lord Ram is frantically searching for Sits. It doesn’t really need much of plot development, and don’t believe that Saket was creating abhayankar out of his hallucinations. More than a n unreliable narrator, I would say the narrative is a mix of the story that Saket told his grandson as well as Saket’s own hazy, mixed up memories on his deathbed.

LikeLiked by 2 people
brangan

February 19, 2020

Heisenberg / MANK: For me, the way the film “holds” (and becomes richer) is as an “unreliable” tale of a man who liked to first-personalise his stories. This is a more tragic kind of FORREST GUMP — with Saket Ram putting himself into a series of events after a certain point to the extent that we are no longer sure what is fact and what is fiction.

And MANK. I don’t see the THALAPATHY parallel at all. Except for the few main things (“Godse killed Gandhi”, etc), we know very little about this period of events. I mean, certainly not to the extent that we are able to correlate THALAPATHY on a scene by scene / character by character basis.

THALAPATHY is a deliberately constructed PARALLEL. Duryodhana is now a gangster. Arjuna is now a collector. So on and so forth.

This is a TANGENT. It is almost completely imagined AROUND a central event (the Gandhi assassination), with very few “parallels” for the audience to discern.

HEY RAM – to me — is essentially about how the “madness” of a period in history is reflected through the “madness” of a man (and the “madness” — i.e. the thrillingly crazy what-ifs — of his story).

LikeLiked by 5 people
H. Prasanna

February 19, 2020

@MANK Thank you for the link. I read that awesome piece when it came out. Much of it was echoed here by BR. I wanted your take on the unreliable narrator angle.

For my two cents, I felt the adoption of the flawed protagonist really comes together in this movie for Kamal (in his playbook from Mahanadhi to Virumaandi; sort of carrying Sivaji’s torch). The things-get-real-fast-for-arrogant-privileged-man gets the good ol kitchen sink here with the proverbial over the topness of the absurd range of emotions the character goes through. A man who purportedly went through all the brutality shown here is probably out of his mind with the guilt, and is drenched in self-loathing with the sheer egomania of his intellectuality not letting him see his role in all this. He probably didn’t go through it all but plunges himself into many fantasies to make sense of everything that is happening around him.

The specificity of the movie as that character’s experiences is really what makes the movie work for me. It takes a deviant turn into self-introspection of privileged Indians at that time, when there is an obvious villain in the British. They were literally letting millions in Bengal die in famines and stoking the fire of communal violence right under Ram’s eyes. The story does not address this or any of the other hundred easy tropes that historical fiction usually does. See Indian for a contrast. Because of that, Hey Ram becomes a wildly provocative odyssey into the mind of a bourgeois intellectual at that time.

@BR, on your question about why he is not a good father.

It starts with his justifications for going after Gandhi. Although he is manipulated quite easily by Abhyankar, he is shown as an intellectual himself and more humane than Abhyankar (see his conversations with his lovers). I think maybe he is trying to kill Gandhi as a form of self-punishment. He realises that he can stop punishing himself when his friend makes the ultimate sacrifice to bring back the old Ram. Like a benevolent god, Gandhi not only takes credit for the country’s freedom but also the fall for the partition violence. And only Gandhi could have given him the salvation, and Ram was so close, yet so far. He probably withered away without ever having any way to confess his sins and get closure/salvation. And the only way he could tell his story was by connecting the factual evidence in his hands with the absurd, abstract phantasmagoria of events he tells his grandson.

LikeLiked by 2 people
keshavr110592

February 20, 2020

There’s this epic and super-comprehensive analysis on Hey Ram – it’s a fascinating read.

Hey Ram: An Analysis (Part 1/20)

Maybe it’s quite well known, but do check it out if you haven’t.

LikeLike
keshavr110592

February 20, 2020

Also, I am pretty sure that of the many books KH must have researched while making Hey Ram, this is one of them : https://www.amazon.com/Men-Who-Killed-Gandhi-ebook/dp/B00WQPQKC4

This book details the events leading up to the assassination of Gandhi with a deep focus on the group of men who planned it (It’s not just Godse!)

Like BR says, this movie is a mix of fiction and truth – but the level of detail to which KH has researched and blended Saket Ram into the real events back then is just astounding.

For example, remember this blind guard whom Saket Ram bribes to enter the hut, under a pretext of taking a photo? A similar blind guard was in reality, indeed stationed outside the hut in Birla House.

Remember that dialogue the blind guy mentions to Saket that there was a group before him with a similar request? That also happened : that group was the one who tried to kill Gandhi in Birla House itself on 20 Jan (from the window, just like Saket Ram wanted to) – but that was a failed attempt (and then succeeds on 30 Jan) – in fact we see the camera focus on this group(including Godse) for a moment (including a dialogue in the background, “Where’s Nathu?”)

Infact the detailing on the very window from which Kamal wanted to shoot Gandhi has been maintained – the book includes a picture of that window frame – what we see in the movie is an exact replica of the real one!

To just think of the level of pain and detail he has undertaken to create this masterpiece is really fascinating.

LikeLiked by 1 person
shaviswa

February 20, 2020

This film did not work for me at all.

a) As someone had mentioned above, the characters speaking in accented Tamizh was horribly distracting.

b) The romantic scenes with Rani Mukherjee pushed the envelop much further than was needed in the film. At one point the audience in the theater where I saw the movie started saying Kamal added that character as a Bengali in the film only because he had set his eyes on Ranu Mukherjee 🙂

c) The sequence where Kamal gets inducted into the right wing fanatic groups (by a wonderful Atul Kulkarni) and then Kamal getting indoctrinated were all hastily done. It was not very convincing at all.

d) A couple of songs in the film dragged the screenplay down. You essentially wait for the songs to get over.

e) The scene where Shah Rukh Khan suddenly pops up to save Kamal and the depiction of riots in that area – you say it is wonderfully written sequence BR – was so phoney. I could hear people at the theater sniggering at those scenes. The scenes came out so hollow and lacking conviction.

f) There were 100s of characters in the film (and many of them played by prominent artists as well). At one point your head starts to spin about who is doing what in the story.

g) Kamal’s transformation to not wanting to kill Gandhi was very weakly portrayed. The conviction to kill was very strong but the reverse process was done very ineffectively.

What worked best was the music. Ilaiyaraja actually elevated an ordinary movie into a much better movie with brilliant BGM. And a couple of songs are for eternity.

After coming out of the cinema, we were all wondering…..”enna thaan solla varaan Kamal?”

LikeLike
apala

February 20, 2020

This was one of the greatest films ever made – for me! Loved it when it was released (made this fanboy into a disciple!) and another 20+ times…

When the movie was about to release it had one of the best web pages… Experiment with Truth, if I remember!

Just to give how well detailed the movie was: They even show Godse’s migraine issue in a passing shot…

Great piece of art!

LikeLiked by 1 person
apala

February 20, 2020

https://uiowa.edu/indiancinema/hey-ram

LikeLike
Anu Warrier

February 20, 2020

I loved this film when I first watched it, and then liked it even more on subsequent watchings. The Tamil version, I felt, was better than the Hindi – the dialogues were more hard-hitting. My take on this (if you don’t mind, BR – please feel free to delete it, otherwise):

https://anuradhawarrier.blogspot.com/2016/05/hey-ram-2000_18.html

LikeLiked by 2 people
H. Prasanna

February 21, 2020

@Anu I really enjoyed your take on the film. You gave so much context to everything that happened in the movie. Thank you 🙂

LikeLike
Anu Warrier

February 21, 2020

Thanks, Prasanna. 🙂

LikeLike
Dora

February 21, 2020

@Anu, enjoyed reading your write up, thanks for the share.

The one thing I was always confused about – where does Saket live in Tamilnadu? Most blogs and reviews mention Srirangam, but, during the scene when they leave for Maharashtra, the family asks Mythili to signal if they are leaving from Central or Egmore.

Also, does anyone know where the shooting actually took place for the Tamil Nadu scenes? Is it true that the gopuram shown during the wedding scene is Madhava perumal Kovil in Mylapore? How about the gopuram shown when the scene cuts from the mad elephant in Calcutta to the temple elephant in Tamil Nadu (with the lyrics madham kondu nadathum vazhkai playing in the background)?

LikeLike
apala

February 21, 2020

Some interesting insight from MK Mani – which addresses “why he is what he is” in the film.

LikeLike
Honest Raj

February 22, 2020

@Dora: When the Atul Kulkarni character asks him “Thamizhaa? Endha ooru?”, he says Thanjavur; and then the former says, “Naan Tanjavur Maratha.”

LikeLike
Anu Warrier

February 22, 2020

Thanks, Dora.

LikeLike
shaviswa

February 23, 2020

The location in TN is very ambiguous. Atul Kulkarni says he is also fro Tanjavur when Kamal replies he is from that place. When the story moves out of Calcutta, initially it looks like Srirangam. Then VS Raghavan, who finds issues with Ram’s horoscope, is visiting them from Mayiladuthurai. And then Vaali asks Vasundhara Das to show different signs depending on whether they are leaving from Egmore or Central.

So looks like Kamal was not sure about where to place the TN part of the story. Maybe the dialogues were written on the sets and they did not have enough attention to detail on this aspect.

LikeLike
shaviswa

February 23, 2020

That VS Raghavan is around the family often and visits from Mayiladuthurai implies that they live somewhere around Tanjavur. So the Egmore vs Central was probably a goof-up.

LikeLike
Ravi

February 25, 2020

IIRC, (watched the movie when it was released), the place mentioned in the tamil version was Mannargudi (in hindi it was just madras). VS Raghavan could not have said Mayiladuthurai as it was known as Mayavaram (Mayuram) back then.

LikeLike

Leave a comment