Hey Ram & Freedom at Midnight

After my ‘comeback’ I wanted my first post to be an ‘intellectual’ one.

Ever since I became passionate (more like fanatical) about movies and insisted on viewing even Tamil movies with subtitles (after watching lot of world movies, this is an unfortunate side effect) I have come to recognise that Tamil movies are no inferior to world films and one of the pioneers of Tamil movies and one of its greatest sons is of course- Padmashree Kamal Hassan.

Speaking about Kamal, all fellow movie lovers will agree that one of his more ambitious and really great piece of work is ‘Hey Ram’. This multilingual movie about India during independence is, in every sense, the most complete piece of cinema. But a lot of those lovers won’t be aware what the movie is all about until and unless they know about another great piece of work. This one is a book, which is said to be the best historical account of India during Independence. It is “Freedom at Midnight” by Dominique La Pierre and Larry Collins. Anyone who has read the book will come to understand how authentic a film ‘Hey Ram’ really is. I have watched the movie a couple of times and can give a few examples about how far the movie stays truthful to the book.

Casual dialogues in the film, about historical events and figures, which come for just a few seconds are all discussed in detail as chapters in the book. I noticed atleast half a dozen such instances...

- Before kamal is about to marry Vasundhara, he, Y G Mahendra and Vyapuri discuss about Radcliffe- the person who drew the partition line b/w India and Pakistan- I haven’t heard about him before I saw the film. Radcliffe and how he partitioned the country are discussed in detail in Freedom at Midnight.
- When Kamal goes to Culcutta after independence, he sees Gandhi and Surawardhy (governor of Bengal) speaking to the crowd. This meeting is discussed in detail in the Freedom at Midnight. Also they discuss in detail about the need to place Gandhi in Bengal during independence and the consequences.
- When Kamal goes to Maharashtra to meet the Maharaja, in a scene Maharaja casually remarks that (while waiting in a railway gate) ‘Whats the use of opening this one gate, all the other gates have been closed to Maharaja like me’. There’s a separate chapter in Freedom at Midnight dedicated to the Maharajas and their life and how they lost all their powers and luxuries after the independence.
- In the same scene, Kamal meets Lalwani, who tells about losing his family in Karachi in communal riots after partition. A major part of the Book is dedicated to his riots.
- When Kamal meets Shah Rukh in delhi, he asks all muslims to go to ‘Jinnah’s Pakistan’. Shah Rukh casually remarks that Jinnah’s own daughter decided to stay in India after independence. This is mentioned in Freedom at Midnight.

- And in my opinion the greatest is the scene after Gandhi’s assassination. When Mountbatten is asked about who killed Gandhi he says “It was a Hindu who killed Gandhi, not a Muslim” and when his aide asks how he knew it, he mentions “I didn’t, was it a Hindu, thank god for that, or else the country would’ve been torn into pieces”. This dialogue is taken straight out of the book.

These are a few things which I noticed, I’m sure there’ll be more in the movie which will come into the open only after a few more viewings. Kamal proves why a perfectionist beyond doubt. Pity the movie went underappreciated. This surely is a masterpiece.