Once upon a time in India

Originally posted Sunday, February 11, 2007 at 7:31pm

So when I came back to OU one of the fun things I was hoping to do with some of you guys is watch one of my favorite movies, “Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India,” with you. It’s one of the most popular and expensive Bollywood film of all time, and it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 2002.

(If you’re not familiar with Bollywood movies, they all are about 4 hours long and have elaborate song-and-dance numbers with the actors lip-synching. Lagaan has four songs in it which I really like.)

Last semester I tried buying a copy at Blockbuster, but it rang up as over $30, so then I asked if I could rent it instead, but I couldn’t, because the clerk had already taken it out of inventory so that I could buy it. Then I bought a copy at Borders, but I returned it so that I could buy a cheaper copy off Amazon. The first copy I bought off Amazon didn’t work, so I got a refund and had another copy off Amazon mailed to Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, this copy seems to be some kind of crazy bootleg from India or Pakistan, and the subtitles don’t work. On one DVD player they appeared with words misspelled and spaces missing between some of the words, and on another player the subtitles wouldn’t play at all. (If you get a REAL copy of this movie the subtitles are actually quite good, and are available in 6 or 7 languages.) So basically we’re never going to watch this movie together, which is fine with me because you’d probably just hate it anyway. But I just have to share with you the ridiculous promotional text on the back cover of my copy:

LAGAAN, one of the fervently anticipated flicks of the year, has ultimately released. And yes, it does meet the sky-high expectations, although it falls short of being a masterpiece.
Champaner. A small village in Central India.
Like thousands of villages across the country, the farmers of Champaner depend on agriculture as the main source of livelihood. Hard working and fun loving, they have small dreams – rain for the crops and food for the families.
On the outskirts of the village stands a British cantonment, commanded by Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne), an arrogant and capricious man.
Last year, there was rain, but very little. And this year, two months of the monsoon season have gone by… but there are no rains yet. All eyes are skywards as the villagers wait tensely for the life-giving drops from the heavens. They know that if the monsoon Gods evade them this year,
their children will starve.
And then comes a bolt from the blue. The Raja’s (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) emissaries thunder through the province announcing double tax – ‘dugna lagaan’.
A battle begins, which is fought without bloodshed. It is fought by a group of unlikely heroes led by Bhuvan (Aamir Khan). Helped by Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley), the beautiful English girl, and Gauri (Gracy Singh), the young and perky village girl.
Faith and courage come face to face with arrogance and ruthlessness.
It requires grit and determination to attempt a film of this magnitude. It requires guts to defy the norms and parameters of commercial cinema and devote the entire film to a cricket match. It also requires valour and money in abundance to recreate an era which none from the present generation have witnessed (the film is set in the year 1893).
The film exposes the games the Britishers played with the Indians when they set foot on Indian soil.
To cite, two instances, when Captain Russell forces the Raja, a vegetarian, to eat meat or when Russell challenges Bhuvan for a game of cricket, keep the viewer awestruck.
Even the post-challenge sequences that show Aamir gradually making his team of eleven, have been handled proficiently. But the highlight of the film is, without doubt, the cricket match, which dominates the second half completely.

But the film has its share of flaws as well.