On the romance side, which drives most of the songs, ex-soap star Gracy Singh makes a sensible impression in her first bigscreen role as Bhuvan’s love interest, who wards off the similar intentions of Russell’s sister, Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley). With his arched eyebrows and spunky, diminutive stature, Khan makes Bhuvan into a likable lead rather than simply a Bollywood hunk, and his ragtag team is made up of a delightfully inept bunch.
“Lagaan” never drags, thanks almost entirely to its warm, very human feel and - in Bollywood terms - believable characters. Following this simple setup, rest of pic is an almost Ealingesque comedy-drama in which the Indians have three months to learn the game prior to the grand finale. Taking up the challenge is Bhuvan (Khan), who, despite having only the vaguest idea about the game, persuades his fellow villagers to seize the opportunity as a point of national pride. If they lose, they’ll have to pay triple lagaan. Andrew Russell (Paul Blackthorne), forces the local rajah (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) to double the tax, the villagers protest directly to Russell who, on a nasty whim, agrees to cancel their lagaan for three years if they can beat his team at cricket. Story is set in 1893, in the village of Champaner, riven by drought and burdened with the hated “lagaan,” a tax levied by the occupying Brits via tame rajahs in return for protecting them from rivals. Khan has stated he wanted to recapture the human feel of traditional Hindi pics by directors like Bimal Roy and Guru Dutt, sans foreign locations and other trendy hooks.
#TAMILMUSIQ LAGAAN SONGS MOVIE#
With only the traditional number of six songs throughout its 223-minute running time (a reel longer than “Ben-Hur”), the vast majority of the movie is cut and shot in a very straightforward, unkinetic way.
Anil Mehta (whose dance card includes the classic, razzle-dazzle “Hum dil de chuke sanam,” 1999), the movie has a relatively low-key color palette, dominated by dusty ochre and browns, that reflects the story’s setting in a parched area of central India. Debut production by Aamir Khan was a high-rolling gamble by the star-turned-producer: Pic is the first Bollywood picture to shoot synch-sound, entirely on location, with the cast working on just the one picture (rather than back-to-back on several), and with the longest running time for a Hindi pic since Raj Kapoor’s 1970 “My Name Is Joker.” Added to which, it’s reportedly the most expensive Bollywood musical to date, and shot for an amazing five-plus months with a mixed Indian-British cast.īiggest surprise, given the battery of statistics, is that “Lagaan” is a long, long way from being Bollywood’s flashiest movie.