great plot, superb choreography, magnificent scenery, well performed
Disadvantages:
long (but it is so good this isn't really a disadvantage)
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
PLOT
The film opens with a spinning coin - the head of the Empress Victoria on one side, the words "one rupee" on the other - which falls on to a map of colonial India. And so the scene is set. The narrator explains the background story immediately. The year is 1893, the place Champaner, a small, thatched farming village in the heart of India. A British colonial outpost neighbours the village, and charges the Indian Rajah of the province a lagaan (tax), in return for protection and order. Every farmer must contribute to the tax, by parting with a large portion of their harvest, leaving the people hungry and unable to resist the iron grip of the system. We join the villagers in the midst of a long drought, the crops have failed for another year, and they are distraught. Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne), the dastardly leader of the British cantonment, challenges the Rajah to eat meat at a tea party. When the Rajah refuses on religious grounds, Russell doubles the lagaan, to support his ostentatious lifestyle. When the horrified villagers go en masse to the cantonment to complain, they are told to wait until the end of a cricket match. Russell agrees to cancel the tax if the villagers beat the Brits at a game of cricket, a game they have never even heard of. If the Indians lose, they will pay triple lagaan, and face ruin and starvation.……..
We then follow the story through a tumult of plots and sub-plots. A secret teacher from the English camp tries to help the villagers to learn the game - grave treachery in Russell's eyes. There is a charming triangle of romance, love and jealousy, crossed with cultural differences, which keeps the viewer in suspense until the end. A scheming desire, several serious betrayals and a redemption at the eleventh hour also add intrigue to the story.
MAIN CAST
Aamir Khan - Bhuvan Gracy Singh - Gauri Paul Blackthorne - Captain Andrew Russell Rachel Shelley - Elizabeth Russell Suhasini Mulay - Yashodamai Kulbhushan Kharbanda - Rajah Puran Singh Raghuveer Yaday - Bhura Rajendra Gupta - Mukhiya Rajesh Vivek - Guran Sri Vallabh Vyas - Ishwar Javed Khan - Ram Singh Raj Zutshi - Ismail Akhilendra Mishra - Arjan Pradeep Rawat - Deva Daya Shankar Pandey - Goli
The lead roles, a diverse bunch of characters from a ranting fortune-teller to a greasy villain, are all played extremely well. In true Bollywood style, we receive a good blend of lingering stare-downs, maniacal cackling, tear rendering speeches, jealous pouting and suspicious lurking.
Our hero is handsome Bhuvan, played by Bollywood stalwart Aamir Khan in excellent form, who while he is not saving the native wildlife from the bunny-blasting British or trying to remove the barriers of caste division, is busy fighting against social injustices. Khan has a lot of on-screen charisma, and plays Bhuvan with perfect conviction, revealing many layers of personality from cheeky to sincere spirit.
Gracy Singh, in her first lead role, puts in a very good performance as the expressively wide-eyed Gauri, a young village girl trying to support the man she loves, while letting him know how she feels.
Paul Blackthorne is also exceptionally good as the supremely arrogant, controlling and vindictive Russell, with the kind of face you just want to slap through the screen, when he raises that menacing eyebrow and says things like, "You bloody slaves will remain crushed under our boots."
I cannot note one poor performance in the whole movie. Even the elephant who crops up occasionally seems to be putting in an Oscar worthy turn. The only thing which comes to mind, and is a very minor niggle is the occasionally slight over-gushiness of Rachel Shelly as Elizabeth, Russell's sister, but this is all in the best intentions for the plot, and she does portray her character bridging the cultural gap very well.
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Lagaan was shot in Gujurat, and director Ashutosh Gowariker truly makes the most of the surroundings, incorporating many sweeping vistas of the magnificent landscape, complete with wonderful architectural forts and glorious sunsets. Everything is done on a grand scale, and succeeds in making the movie extremely visually exciting, which is enhanced even more by the beautifully choreographed dances.
The sets, from the Indian village life to the British pomp, are elaborate and detailed, yet retain an air of realism, as do the beautifully designed and colour-coordinated fabrics used in the Indian and Victorian costumes alike. It seems as though no expense was spared in making this film a visual feast.
MUSIC
The music is composed by the highly popular A.R. Rahman, who has excelled with catchy, energetic, passionate songs, which are perfectly evocative of the atmosphere and also contribute quite a bit to the plot. He also performs some of the tracks, as the singing voices are all dubbed, which in a way adds to the charm of the sequences.
Songs which stand out for me are:
"Ghanan Ghanan" - a massive choreographed dance involving the whole village celebrating the "melodies of the monsoon" A catchy, melodious ripper, which definitely stimulates audience participation.
"Mitwa" - a rousing optimistic foot-tapper.
"Radha Kaise Na Jale" - performed at the festival of Krishna and Radha, which is an important portent to the ending of the story, and is beautifully danced with colourful swirling fabrics.
"Chale Chalo" - an inspirational "walk on" to victory tune.
There is also British style music, such as the "Waltz for a Romance" which represents the cultural duality of this movie.
The whole soundtrack, which I also own, is wonderful to listen to as a separate entity.
EXTRAS
The extras are located on Disk 1 with the first half of the movie.
"Scene Unseen" - 18 minutes - one long scene which was cut from the final picture, presumably to shorten the length of an already very long film. It has been seamlessly edited out so it does not feel like it was a loss from the movie, but it still interesting to watch, and pursues a side-plot of betrayal and arrest, along with the ever-present love triangle. The subtitles on the DVD don't seem to carry over onto the extras, and I could only muster Dutch from my player, but that is probably due to my lack of technical ability, rather than a problem with the disk.
"Theatrical trailers" - 9 minutes - I expected to find trailers for Lagaan in this section, but instead I was surprised to find only full length trailers for Gandhi and Lawrence of Arabia, both superb movies, but what exactly they have to do with this production - apart from a shared colonial theme - I am not quite sure.
"Filmographies" - The director and four leading actors (Kahn, Singh, Blackthorne, Shelly) are featured in a list of their "selected" recent pictures, which is neither visually exciting or particularly comprehensive. Not a particularly riveting extra.
OPINION
The film is nearly four hours in length, but every minute of that time is pure entertainment. Lagaan bursts with suspense, romance, betrayal, comedy, and full on colourful musicality in true Bollywood style. The scenes move easily into one another, and there are never any static points in the film, and the length becomes entirely unnoticeable. Each time I watch Lagaan, I find my attention effortlessly gripped, and I only detach when I have to change the disks half way, which is annoying, but unavoidable.
The basic plot - tax and cricket - may not sound very appealing to many people. As a big cricket fan this film was recommended to me on that basis, but I have watched it with plenty of friends who are not sports fans, and who have thoroughly enjoyed it. There are so many sub-plots occurring as undertones which carry the movie along, that the cricket is really only a vehicle around which the story occurs, and no expertise of the rules is needed. After all, the sport is brand new to the thousands of villagers watching the game on the sidelines, and every point of law relevant to the story is explained to them and us as it happens, and the match is so well portrayed that I am sure even the most fervent sports-hater will be whipped into a frenzy of excitement.
The music and dancing alone is worth watching the movie for. The sequences are spectacular to watch, and are a wonderful way to move the story on whilst providing fantastic entertainment.
Some people are put off by films with subtitles, but those for this movie were easy to follow. They were presented in good length sentences, at an easy to read pace, and are not at all stilted or oddly translated. I don't speak Hindi, so I am not sure how many of the finer points and nuances of the original script we are missing by watching in English, but if there is any loss it is never noticeable.
As for the peculiar extras, the cut scene was a worthy addition, but the very limited biographies and the bizarre choice of theatrical trailers were in my view slightly pointless. Still, this DVD is well worth buying just for the film, never mind the extras.
For people who have never seen a Bollywood movie, to those who are passionate fans, I would highly recommend this film. For high drama, with moments of comedy, and intrigue thrown in, this is an unforgettable cinematic experience.
FURTHER INFORMATION
Rating - PG. Running time - 215 minutes. Nominated for Best Foreign Film Academy Award, 2002. In Hindi - the region 2 disks have subtitles in 16 languages. Currently £7.97 at amazon.co.uk
Production Year: 2001 - Drama - Director: Phil Alden Robinson, Richard Loncraine, Mikael Salomon, David Nutter, Tom Hanks, David Leland, David Frankel, Tony To - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over
