Khoya Khoya Chand takes you to back to the golden era of 1950s and 1960s of Bollywood, among old-fashioned lights, theatrical sets, divas and vintage vehicles. The visual treatment is marvelous, which creates a splendid atmosphere of those golden old days. Remember the old classic song ” Khoya Khoya Chaand …” of a in a 1950’s movie “Kaala Bazaar” which showed our evergreen “boy” Dev Anand during his hey days?
It is a sleek, neatly created romance set against the golden era of cinema. The movie is of a pretty young starlet Nikhat (Soha Ali Khan) and Zafar (Shiney Ahuja). How she becomes a big star with the help of superstar Prem Kumar (Rajat Kapoor).
Nikhat is a daughter of a well known actress Sharda and is keen to join the Hindi films industry. A young, fledgling wannabe actress, she learns dancing, incidentally she catches the eye of the top actor Prem Kumar with whom she falls in love with.
Khoya Khoya Chand is a story of how she compromises in life at an early age just to break into the limelight by giving in to the reigning star.
Even though Prem Kumar has proclaimed his love for her, she later finds out that he is getting married to someone else.
Some events take place and its another turn in Nikhat’s life, leaving her alone again. Zafar (Shiney Ahuja) helps Nikhat get free from the iron grip of Prem Kumar. But the relationship is short-lived.
Soha Ali Khan has a significant role, a central character that requires her to emote and over-emote and she manages it extraordinarily well to go from joyous to melancholy. It is a brilliant performance from her, no wonder the film rests on her shoulders, yet she manages a luminary profile.
Sonia Jehan, a stunningly beautiful lady brilliantly is cast as a diva, and given some of the film’s finest scenes where she is curiously coy as well as manipulative. Rajat Kapoor is well cast as a star, and Saurabh Shukla’s fine as a plump financier. Shiney Ahuja has a reservoir of talent which he portrays with all the intensity, his grins and especially the scene where he shows his frustration.
The cinematographer Sachin Kumar Krishnan is the main artist in this movie, which has well captured aura and the atmosphere of those golden 50s and 60s. The film has narration by Vinay Pathak, and impressively presented romantic flashbacks.
Throughout the film Khoya Khoya Chand, doesn’t focus on any person in particular or highlight any incident or event. It is a brilliant effort of capturing and collection of smartly executed sequences. The director triumphantly captures the behavioral pattern of stars, budding actors and film-makers to precision. A bit lengthy tale, with an abrupt winding up in the end.
Well done Sudhir Mishra for creating and directing a archetypal movie by recreating the 1950’s and 1960’s era for the screen. It is more interesting that some songs that are being played in the background are most memorable tunes from that era.
Cast of Khoya Khoya Chand:
Shiney Ahuja – Zaffar
Sonya Jehan – Ratanbala
Rajat Kapoor – Prem Kumar
Soha Ali Khan – Nikhat
Sushmita Mukherjee – Sharda
Vinay Pathak – Shaymol
Anil Chaudhary
Saurabh Shukla
Dipannita Sharma
TECHNICAL CREDITS of Khoya Khoya Chand:
Visual Effects by
Devrishi Chatterjee – Digital Compositor
Mahesh Deshpande – Assistant Colorist
Salil Deshpande – Digital Intermediate Line Producer
Avinash Gupta – Digital Compositor
Avik Banerjee – Smoke Artist
Robert Lang – Digital Intermediate Colourist
Balakrishnan P.S. Nadar – Digital Compositor
Ranen Nongmaithem – Digital Compositor
Pavan – Digital Compositor
Abhinav Sah – Digital Compositing Supervisor
Dange Sangram – CG Animator
Naveen Shukla – Digital Compositor
Ashwin Singh – Compositor Credits
Directed by Sudhir Mishra
Story – Sudhir Mishra
Producer – Prakash Jha
Cinematographer – Sachin Kumar Krishnan
Sound Department – Sachin K. Sanghvi (Recordist)
Music by Shantanu Moitra
Cinematography – Sachin Krishan’
Production Design – Gautam Sen
Costumes Design by Ashima Belapurkar, Niharika Khan
Khoya Khoya Chand, movie review