Tere Naam

Radhe is not enrolled at the university but lives on the campus. He has a group; he starts fights, fears nobody, and everyone keeps clear of him. One day he sees Nirjara. She is from a traditional family and is engaged. Radhe starts following her, then takes her away, then tells her he is in love. In time she comes closer to him. Then his enemies trap him; in a fight he takes a heavy blow to the head. His brain is damaged. His family takes him to a temple and he is chained there. Satish Kaushik directs. Salman Khan plays Radhe and Bhumika Chawla plays Nirjara; Sachin Khedekar is in the cast. The language is Hindi. The film is a remake of the 1999 Tamil film Sethu. Salman Khan's haircut in it spread across India and was called by the film's name for years. The film did well at the box office and its soundtrack was among the best selling albums. The matter it treats is how the mentally ill are handled; being chained at a temple rests on a real practice. The narrative does not question the lead's behaviour at the start and presents pursuit as a display of love; that outlook is criticised today. The second half changes register entirely and turns to tragedy. The narrative uses the melodrama shape to the full. Its limit is its outlook; the behaviour in the first half is uncomfortable and the narrative endorses it. Who it is for: viewers who like Indian melodrama and the popular cinema of the period. Who it is not for: its outlook is troubling, it is heavy, and the ending bitter.