A Bollywood Blockbuster
Written: Sep 23 '04 (Updated Feb 03 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Magnificent song-and-dance set pieces, beautiful cast, strong performances, lovely costumes, strong Indian ambiance
Cons: Long film (225 minutes); last third laced with one cliché after another
The Bottom Line: Highly recommended introduction to the unique style of the Bombay film industry (“Bollywood”). Highly accessible for Western viewers.
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| metalluk's Full Review: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India |
The Bombay film industry is one of the most distinctive and productive in the world. Catering to a potential audience of about 1.2 billion people, it has created a film style that is quite different from both Hollywood and the more usual international movies, though the style is closer to that of Hollywood than traditional Asian or European works. Consequently, the Bombay film industry has acquired the nickname of “Bollywood.” There’s a bit of the spirit of MTV in this genre as well.
Lagaan, which is subtitled “Once Upon a Time in India”, is my first experience with a Bollywood movie. I was rather shocked when, a good 20-30 minutes into what appeared to be mainly a drama, the entire rather extensive cast suddenly broke out into song and dance – seemingly coming out of nowhere. I’ve come to understand, however, that very nearly every film out of Bollywood is a musical, of sorts, and that these set piece asides are the standard convention of the genre. I generally believe in conceding each art form its conventions. If one can accept characters walking through their lives singing arias and recitative, as in Western opera, one can certainly accept characters periodically breaking out into song and dance in a film. Besides, the musical numbers were delightful, with melodies you want to hum along with and beautifully choreographed and complex dance routines.
The Story: The story is somewhat ridiculous on the surface of it, but, then again, most Western musicals have fairly absurd plots as well. The setting is a small rural village in central India, called Champaner, in 1893, at the height of British rule over colonial India. Near the village is the fort of a Rajah (King of the province) as well as a British cantonment (military headquarters and barracks). The British ostensibly provide protection for the Rajah from adjacent Rajahs as well protecting the adjacent Rajahs from this one. For this “protection”, the British exact a stiff tax, called a lagaan, consisting of a share of each farmer’s crop. For the impoverished farmers of Champaner, the lagaan is a terrible burden, especially since the region has been parched by a two-year drought. The villagers are barely surviving at a subsistence level of existence.
The previous year, in response to the pleading of the Rajah Puran Singh, the British had agreed to halve the usual lagaan in response to the drought. When the Rajah approaches the senior officer of the cantonment, Captain Andrew Russell (Paul Blackthorne), about again easing the lagaan (because the drought has not abated), the sinister Captain insists that he will do so only if the Rajah, who is a vegetarian, will join the Captain in eating the antelope meat being served for lunch. As this is against the Rajah’s religion, he has to decline. Captain Russell then viciously informs the Rajah that the lagaan will not only continue but will be doubled to make up for the halving in the preceding year.
The villagers are utterly distraught at the news, knowing that they will be unable to pay the double lagaan or to survive the winter under such conditions. One of the young men, Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), wants to resist the decree. The leader of the village, however, settles on a more level-headed plan. They will go as a group to the Rajah to plead their case. Since the Rajah is at the British cantonment, they go to speak with him there, but arrive in the midst of a precious cricket game being played by the British officers. They are told to wait until the game is over. Bhuvan comments that the game is a lot like an old Indian game that he played as a child and that it seems preposterous for grown men to be playing it in the middle of the day. When the cricket ball suddenly appears in their midst, Bhuvan makes the mistake of picking it up and holding onto it. When confronted by Captain Russell, Bhuvan retorts with a remark about the foolishness of the game. Captain Russell, stung by this affront to British pride and prerogatives, states that he will grant the villagers’ request for relief from the tax under one condition. The villagers must beat the British officers in a game of cricket. If they lose, however, the lagaan will be tripled. If they win, it will be suspended not only this year, but for two additional years. The rest of the villagers understand the implausibility of beating the British at a game that the British have played and mastered for years and the Indians have never so much as observed, but Bhuvan accepts the challenge. Later, he explains to the others that they couldn’t possibly pay double lagaan, so they have nothing to lose. The game will take place in three months time.
Bhuvan’s most loyal supporter in the village is Gauri (Gracy Singh), a young woman who is madly in love with him and who has believed from childhood that they are destined to marry. Bhuvan appears very nearly as crazy about Gauri as she is about him, but intent on stringing her along for a bit before conveniently surrendering. Bhuvan needs to put together a team and teach them the game, which he doesn’t know himself. Initially, his sole recruit is a young boy, with whom he plays a bit of catch. Bit by bit, Bhuvan begins to add additional members of the village to his team and cause. Each is something of a misfit and a character in his own way. There’s the chicken farmer who’s good at catching the ball because of years of catching chickens! There’s the mute temple guard who is as strong as an ox. There’s the bolo thrower with a head start on learning how to bowl the cricket ball. There’s a crazed fortune teller named Guran (Gracy Singh) with the wild demonic hair and eyes of Rasputin. Still, he’s only got five players and no interest from the rest of the village who are convinced that the idea is crazy.
Enter Elizabeth Russell (Rachel Shelley), a demure English rose and sister of the malicious Captain Russell. Motivated initially by a sense of her brother’s injustices, Elizabeth decides she will help the Indians by teaching them the rules of cricket. Soon Elizabeth acquires a second motivation as she falls hard for the dashing and noble Bhuvan. Bhuvan, whose eyes are fixed on the challenge in front of him, is somewhat oblivious to the depth of Ms. Russell’s attraction to him, but Gauri is all too aware of it, immediately recognizing Elizabeth as a rival. The very best of the song and dance routines, in my opinion, occurs at this point and is a lovely playing out of the jealousy theme. Elizabeth, Bhuvan, and Gauri make an appealing love triangle, introducing inter-ethnicity issues along with the usual competition. Both women are presented as entirely admirable and respect-worthy, making the choice a tough one, on the surface, for both Bhuvan and viewers.
With Elizabeth as an ace-in-the-hole, Bhuvan is able to attract additional men for his team, each with some particular attribute that will make him valuable as a cricket player. One lower-caste “untouchable” has a deformed right arm that causes him to throw a naturally wicked curve ball. The other players initially threaten to quit the team if an untouchable is allowed to play, but Bhuvan insists and makes an impassioned plea for inclusiveness. Captain Russell also has his ace-in-the-hole since the last player to fill out the villagers’ team, Lakha (Yashpal Sharma), is effectively a spy for the British and a traitor to his fellow villagers, prepared to throw the game if it should be necessary.
Well, needless to say, the Cricket match takes place and if I need to tell you which side wins, then you’re denser than Denny Dimwit. The match takes place over three days and nearly 1.5 hours of film time out of this 225 minute epic. From musical drama, the film now turns to conventional underdog sports team drama with the full array of trite clichés. All that’s left for the ending is the appearance of a massive storm cloud yielding the much-needed torrential downpour.
Themes: The themes of the film are somewhat overly blatant and maudlin. The narrow theme is the determination of the underdog and its inevitable sequel, good will triumph over evil. The broader context gives the film whatever degree of thematic merit you want to attribute to it. After choking under British rule and domination for so many years, it will be many additional years before Indians tire of films that reinforce Indian pride and the brave struggle for independence.
Production Values: Lagaan was the most expensive Bollywood film ever made – and it shows. There’s a star cast, high quality vocalists dubbing the musical numbers, an enormous contingent of extras, and magnificent and elaborate dance numbers supported by superb choreography and gorgeous costumes. The costumes are so gorgeous, in fact, that I sometimes had difficulty convincing myself that these were impoverished villagers. The music track provided by A.R. Rahman consisted of mellifluous numbers of an appealing character.
Director Ashutosh Gowariker treats us to a beautiful array of landscapes and local architecture and culture that fully establish the Indian character of this film. It may be Hollywood-like in film-style, but it’s all Indian in its national flavor.
The three stars of the film were all well-cast and turned in superlative performances. Aamir Khan was both star and producer for the film and is one of the national treasures of India, currently, and a leading heartthrob. He is indeed exceptionally handsome, with an appealing exuberance as well. He is light-skinned and somewhat Western in appearance and I have to wonder if there isn’t a bit of the same kind of racism at work here as that which sometimes favors light-skinned blacks in America. In any case, he’s a very strong performer both as an actor and a dancer. I can’t say enough about Gracy Singh’s contribution to the film. Not only is she gorgeous and more typically Indian in appearance than her co-star, but she is blessed with an impressive range of expressiveness in her face and eyes as well as exquisitely graceful movements. In the song-and-dance numbers, she typically steals the show. Elizabeth Russell, with her big brown doe-eyes, gives us a convincing blend of Victorian feminine reserve, courageous independence, and nobility in dealing with heartbreak. She spins a nice turn in a song-and-dance dream sequence that reveals her infatuation with Bhuvan.
The secondary characters were better than average as well, especially Rajesh Vivek as the wild-eyed fortune teller. He has a look that would scare the Dickens out of most of us if we met him on a darkened city street. The English portion of the cast was not half-bad either. Paul Blackthorne was a quintessential villain, almost reminiscent of Snidely Whiplash of the Bullwinkle cartoons – twirling his mustache and generally strutting and preening in Anglo vanity. The rest of the English officers were deliciously mean-spirited and distasteful as well.
As much as I admire this film, I judge from other reviews that my admiration for it is less than average. My one complaint, other than length, is that the last third of the film – the cricket game – milks every overworked cliché imaginable ad nauseam. For example, when the young boy on the villagers’ team makes a critical base-running error and starts to cry out of shame, one of the British officers mocks him saying, “Why don’t you go back to your mama?” There’s just no room at all, in this film, for gray. The villains are made villainous over and over again. I’ve seen better underdog sports team films, less weighted down in trite clichés and predictability. Some judicious editing could have trimmed from this last third and shortened the overall film length at the same time.
Bottom-Line: Lagaan is a wonderfully entertaining musical epic that is bound to please most viewers. Though made for the Indian audiences that are the bread-and-butter of Bollywood, the crossover potential of Lagaan is clearly evident in it receiving an Academy Award nomination in the Best Foreign Film category. Among Indian films, this one is undoubtedly one of the most accessible for Western viewers, though for me personally that is less a complement than a deficit. The last thing I want to see afflict foreign films as a whole is more Americanization. Personally, I feel that this film got exactly the extent of recognition in America that it warranted: an Academy nomination but without taking home the trophy. It doesn’t hold a candle to the best films of Indian master Satyajit Ray (e.g., Pather Panchali or Charulata).
It’s a very long film at 225 minutes but it’s so diverse and entertaining that you’ll hardly notice how quickly the time has passed. Once you logon to Lagaan you probably won’t logoff ‘til it’s all over. Lagaan is in Hindi and English. The DVD has a selection of subtitles in seven languages! There is a limited selection of extras, including deleted scenes, filmographies, and production notes.
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You might want to check out these other excellent films from India:
Aparajito
Charulata
Earth
Jalsaghar
Kadosh
Mother India
Pather Panchali
Salaam Bombay!
The Terrorist
The World of Apu
Recommended:
Yes
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metalluk
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