Scam 1992 The Harshad Mehta Story

Starring Pratik Gandhi, Sharib Hashmi, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Hemant Kher

Directed by Hansal Mehta

There is a certain desperate grace in the Indian workingclass’ existence that most filmmakers are unable to capture. Even Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee where seldom able to capture that quality of sublimity in the squalor.

Hansal Mehta’s narrative, based on the infamous Harshad Mehta Dalaal Street scam, is not afraid to get its feet wet in the mud. He looks at his Gujarati characters with a certain respect and admiration without excessively edifying them. The journey from the cramped two-room apartment to the sprawling glass-encased affluence of Harshad Mehta and his family is delineated with vigorous authenticity.

That the director is a Gujarati and his leading man too is a Gujarati goes along way into constrictive an energetic yet calm edifice of middleclass ambitions and how far an individual is