Review of Hey Ram (2000) by Karen S — 29 Oct 2009

It's 1946 and Indian independence is at hand when HEY RAM begins and we meet 3 friends, Saket Ram (Kamal Hassan) a Hindu, another Hindu friend Lalwani, and their mutual Muslim friend Amjad played by Shah Rukh Khan.

At first it seems as if we're going to see just another Bollywood flick as the 3 launch into a giddy, drunken musical number. But the tone of the film turns on a dime when Saket Ram returns home to Calcutta the very day the violent riots between Hindus and Muslims break out.

Tragically his beloved young wife Aparna (Rani Mukherjee) is gang raped and murdered and Saket himself is swept up in the murderous mobs seeking retribution. He finds himself both witnessing and committing unthinkable acts.

That night is a kaliedoscope of depravity, and after experiencing a blood soaked old Muslim man mistake him for an angel sent to save him, and the old man's blind grand daughter groping her way toward her own death, he can take no more and staggers back to his apartment and his slaughtered wife.

But even at his own doorstep there is one more horror--a sacred white elephant standing, swaying, over its lifeless mahout. Before reaching that point there was one other encounter for Saket Ram, and it was a life changing one.

He met a wild eyed rebel Sriram Abhyankar (Atul Kulkarni) It's Sriram who first planted the evil, logical notion in Saket's grief stricken brain that the cause of all this death and chaos was one man, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi--The Mahatma.

It was he who betrayed his own country and his own religion, and if things were ever to be right again, he must die. I almost turned this off when I realized that I was watching a film that potentially dealt with the life of the man who had assassinated the Mahatma, but I didn't and I'm glad of it.

Although the film is painfully slow, it is well worth watching.