Locations in Europe: UK
Storyline
Star(s): Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Hrithik Roshan, Kareena Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan, and Jaya Bachchan
Songs/Dance: UK, India
Indian/ International Crew: Collaboration between Indian and international crews.
Language: Hindi
Director/Producer: Karan Johar/ Dharma Films
Associate Producer/Production Manager/Production Supervisor Associate Producer: Hiroo Johar, Production Supervisor (UK): Andy Pavord, Production Manager (Egypt): Romany Helmy
Film Location Analysis
By Ranjani Mazumdar
Like in the case of many 1990s films, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham negotiates ideas of tradition and modernity and expresses its anxiety about notions of "Indianness" during the early days of globalisation. Thus, family values, rituals, and traditions are constantly emphasised by the patriarch of the family (Amitabh Bachchan), while modern values are made to hinge on the right to love across classes. This conflict is placed alongside an aspirational desire for success in economic terms. The mise en scène of the film is deliberately staged to generate this tension.
When Rahul falls in love and marries Anjali, father, and son part company. The loss and conflict in the family becomes the space that must be renegotiated in order to bring about the family’s final reunion. For this reunion, the narrative traverses London, creating a hypermodern landscape of commodity excess. Rohan has arrived here in search of his brother. His entry into London is presented with the song "Vande Mataram," as postcard images of the city’s technological and architectural expanse dominate the screen. Brand names, cafes, public transportation, and the ubiquitous urban crowd saturate every frame. The nationalist refrain of the soundtrack seems rather ridiculous, saturating the narrative of the film from this point on. The desire to come home, evoking the Indian diaspora’s nostalgia for cultural legitimation in the nation, is played out against a wealthy interior and public world.
Many sections of the film are staged in simulated interiors supposedly located in London. However, the film also makes particular use of UK’s large gardens and historic buildings with dramatic facades. The Harshvardhan home in Delhi has lavish interiors, but the exterior is an Oxfordshire Gothic building, immediately signalling wealth. The college where Pooja studies is Blenheim Palace, located in the village of Woodstock, north of Oxfordshire. This is a large mansion built in the 18th century that was the home of Winston Churchill. The extended gardens were used to stage song sequences and public occasions like Krish’s school event. Along with this, we see the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, South Wales which stood for the Wembley Stadium in London. The screen college's interior was the recently refurbished British Museum on Russell Street. Rohan’s dance down the stairs around the museum's circular structure gave the site form. K3G shows several shots of the river Thames, the London Bridge, and other known exterior markers to present the city as a very important context for the projection of an NRI imagination.
The divided family’s first reunion after many years is staged at the Blue Water Mall in London. The glass facades, postmodern architecture, flow of colours, and commodities, all saturated with brilliant light, forms the texture of the mise-en-scène. Bodies flow in and out of this commodity cosmos. The mall becomes a space that can enable the possibility of a reunion. Unknown to each other, all the members of the family are present in this space. Mother and son suddenly meet after ten years of separation. Tears of loss and reunion are embedded in the dance of commodities all around. The mall provides the dream of the "good life" and the moral universe of family bonds. The mall is then staged in the film as the space where the hypermodern can coexist with the deeply familial. The use of the Blue Water Mall in a 2001 release was important since, at that time, India was only beginning to build its malls. The presence of the London mall in K3G was meant to provide a sense of a new kind of commodity landscape to an aspirational public waiting for what they saw as the promise of globalisation.
Tourism
http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/bollywood-film-locations-to-figure-on-uk-tourism-map-/32046/
https://www.screendaily.com/bollywood-k3g-takes-uk-box-office-by-storm/407809.article
https://www.filmapia.com/where-is-it-shot/films/kabhi-khushi-kabhie-gham
https://www.movie-locations.com/movies/k/Kabhi-Khushi-Kabhie-Gham.php http://wherewasitshot.com/kabhi-kushi-kabhie-gham/
http://www.natgeotraveller.in/london-through-shah-rukh-khans-lens/
