Khosla ka Ghosla

Khosla Ka Ghosla

This year Indian Cinema lost one of the most significant filmmakers it has ever produced, Hrishikesh Mukherjee. One of the few people to have successfully managed to walk the middle path between "commercial" and "art/offbeat/etc", his films resonated with the Indian audience, because they were connected to the middle class and yet managed to make their seemingly mundane world seem entertaining and even noble.
But he is gone and yet here forever, because he has clearly managed to influence a good deal of the new wave of directors, Rajkumar Hirani, Chandan Arora and now Dibakar Banerjee
KKG is a simple story about a family with typical family dynamics and the life crisis they go through. Anupam Kher plays the typical aging patriarch, who invests his entire life savings into a plot of land, and he sees his life crumble around him when a crooked builder encroaches on their plot. He's obviously extremely emotionally invested in his younger son and has generation gap issues with him. Afore mentioned son (Parveen) is a grave individual, attempting to be detached from the chaos of both his house and country, and hoping to escape to NY for a job offer he's recieved. Symbolically, in a crunch, he cuts out his own picture from a family picture for a visa application. His theatre-actress bindaas new age friend/girlfriend (Tara) acts as his voice of conscience.
From the beginning the film is set up perfectly, we immediately see Khosla's little world through his own eyes, in the form of his hilarious nightmare, and clearly see Khosla believes his family to be completely apathetic towards him. In the following scene we immediately see the flip side of coin. The film progresses at a fairly regular pace, and we understand all the dynamics of the family before the crisis strikes. The build-up to Khurana (Boman's crotch scratching slimy builder) is really well done. Gradually we are taken to a roller-coaster second half and a pat-dry finish.
There is a lot lacking in terms of transitions of scenes, Khosla's continued opposition gets annoying, and Bapu (Navin Nischol)'s stammering in the second half makes proceedings much less plausible. But the inherent simplicity and characterisation more then makes up for any shortcomings.All the performances were excellent. Boman Irani is as expected fabulous, fitting into his sleazy role with a panache that almost makes his lewd character endearing. Anupam Kher lends an innocence and annoyingness to his character that gives you such a sense of deja-vu while watching, havent I met this person before? isn't this the uncleji next door? Tara Sharma is shockingly cute and natural, but her hysterical cackling should have been left out. Parveen is just first-rate, and holy crap is he hot. The biggest surprise for me was Ranvir Shorey as the good-for-nothing elder son Bunty, he got the body language and mannerisms just bang on. In fact this film just screamed delhi in so many ways, in the people. attitudes, slang, etc without showing a single monument or landmark from the city.
Memorable scenes:-The nightmare/funeral scene-
The pehelwaans and their mentor's portfolio photo album
-Khosla's discussions with Saini, practical and realistic "Jawaan bete sab compromise karo to fir budhape ka insurance mil jaata hai"
-Khosla's first site visit...

Khosla ka Ghosla on the outset has a lot of similarities with Munnabhai series, both see the corruption and daily hassles involved with being in the Indian middle class through comedy-tinted glasses, both are feelgood without being saccharine sweet.
Most interestingly, both have a very layered style of film-making. While many desi films typically can be sectioned off into "comedy-slapstick" portions that typically occur before "serious-drama" portions, here the light moments overlap the serious ones and occur when you least expect them, quite like life itself.
Is KKG a landmark film? No, but its a definite step in the right direction. Its easy to laugh at things that are outrageous and hence ludicrous, which is why slapstick works so well. To make someone laugh at their own life is much more tricky, and thats precisely what this film seamlessly achieves.