Sindhanai Selvar Dr.Kamal HaasaR - favourite movies,scenes 2

[P_R]

venkkiram, I think this is precisely the problem. The moment we hear "commercial," we think of things that were incongruent, did not cohere with the overall narrative flow, stuck out like a sore thumb, etc. (How well placed this particular song is, is a different debate. Here let me just assume it is indeed misplaced.) The larger point one misses is the commercial aspects of the film itself, the film as a whole.

There are many things that make Hey! Ram a commercial venture as a whole:
* An eventful life with many coincidences (seemingly everyman protagonist getting in touch with many influential people ranging from the Maharaja to Gandhi himself (!), chance meetings with old friends and so on), generally a thick plot that is characteristic of Indian commercial cinema.
* A mythical narrative in which the protagonist is taken across the length and breadth of India thus attempting to cover the historic event in its totality. (A more realistic film would have been set in just one of the regions affected during the partition.)
* The two love angles that are key to the plot and Saket's transitions.
* The Hindu-Muslim friendship angle that is again a classic trope and key to t.
* And the most important of all, the very idiom of the film. Where the last hour involving an attempt to kill Gandhi operates as a thriller (!), usage of songs in general a pronounced score to express various emotions, the transitions of time etc., hero's physical transformations.

idhellAm nAn yOsichchu solREn. As a writer-director who's been (involved in) making commercial films for several years, Kamal-ukku idhu dhAn instinctive-AvE varum.

Exactement!