I had hoped to watch the 2001 film Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (often just referred to as Lagaan) on the flight back from the U.S. last month. Sadly, it wasn't among the available Bollywood options -- there were only about two dozen so that's not a huge surprise. Too bad. When else am I going to get 14 hours to myself to watch whatever I'd like?
Well, how about a garage movie marathon on Australian Father's Day?
(This is my last post about this marathon, by the way.)
I had scouted out possibly watching it on YouTube, where a free copy is available. Strangely, I hadn't been able to find it on iTunes. However, that turned out not to be necessary as it subsequently turned up on Netflix. In fact, I'm really glad I didn't go with the YouTube version, because as it turns out, it's "only" three hours and eight minutes long, meaning some unknown part of it is missing.
"Only," Vance? How long is the approved version of this movie?
Oh it's a mere three hours and 43 minutes.
Yes, Lagaan is now officially one of the longest movies I have ever seen. The only one off the top of my head that I'm sure is longer is Gettysburg, the 1993 civil war movie that had a special advanced screening on the campus of my alma mater, Bowdoin College, whose sixth president, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, is one of the characters in the movie. (Played by Jeff Daniels.) However, running times are notably difficult to pin down -- IMDB says Gettysburg was four hours and 31 minutes, when I think the version I saw was closer to four.
Anywayyyy ... this movie. Why this movie?
For one, it's one of the only Bollywood movies whose name I knew prior to starting this series. And I knew it courtesy of someone's rapturous words in my Flickchart Facebook group, where the film was recommended in the highest possible terms. I knew it was about cricket and I knew it was really, really long, and also really great.
All of these things are true.
In fact, for the lion's share of the running time of Lagaan -- which may have taken me closer to five hours to complete, with a nap near the beginning and other interruptions -- I was sure that it was going to be the first five-star movie of Audient Bollywood. I've gotten to 4.5 stars on a couple occasions but five still eludes me. In fact, as an indication of just how elusive five stars is, I haven't given a five-star rating to any film in 2022, last bestowing the honor on Key Largo a few weeks before Christmas.
In order to get five stars, a movie has to be pretty much perfect -- like Key Largo. And as Lagaan crept into the latter half of its fourth hour, it was clear to me that what I had thought was a tight script with no wasted story -- really! -- had ultimately proven itself a bit too flabby in the end. That, and the fact that I found the ending -- the very ending, not the climax of the narrative -- a little disappointing, removed it from that rarefied air.
But my, what a good movie this is.
Given its incredible girth, I thought it might be a sort of the history of cricket in India, one that spanned the decades. Its 1893 starting point was only the beginning of the story, surely. But no, this whole movie takes place within a span of about four months in 1893, and is all the better for it. (I thought it might be based in historical fact, but as it turns out, it's just a really good yarn.)
The drought-stricken village of Champaner is the setting. It's under the thumb of an outpost of British officers, who extract a tax from the villagers via the local kings. See, the villagers pay tax to the king, but the king turns around and gives it to the British -- a fact known by everyone involved. This year, a particularly arrogant captain named Russell (Paul Blackthorne) demands twice the tax from the village, even though they have not been able to produce their usual crop due to the lack of rain. A lover of cricket and a rather sadistic fellow, Russell agrees to waive the double tax, as well as the tax for next year and the year after, if villagers from Champaner can beat his British soldiers in a game of cricket. If they lose, they'll owe triple the tax -- which will well and truly decimate the villagers, who were already expecting to be mostly decimated by the double tax.
Russell picks out one villager who stands up to him -- Bhuvan (Aamir Khan) -- to make this decision on behalf of not only this village, but all other villages in the region, who must agree to the same terms. That is, terms that Bhuvan will commit them to with his decision, which must be made there on the spot. The only problem is, they've never played cricket. They have a similar game that they play as children, but they'll need to learn the rules of the Brits' game, and also beat them at it, in only three months' time. Most people wouldn't have agreed to the deal, but Bhuvan isn't most people.
What follows is a rousing sports underdog story -- with musical numbers, naturally -- about the formation of their team and their preparations for the big match. Bhuvan has a local love interest in Gauri (Gracy Singh) and a potential love interest among the British, Elizabeth Russell, the captain's sister, who secretly helps the villagers learn the game, feeling like they've been handed a raw deal by her brother. She's played by Rachel Shelley.
Director Ashutosh Guwariker is so good at assembling all this, at establishing these characters and the stakes, at setting up this world and populating it with rousing dance numbers, that you feel like you'll watch happily for however long such a story lasts. And really, although it is long and deliberately paced, never does it get distracted on purely tangential material. It's as tight as a 223-minute movie can possibly be. (I said earlier there was flab, but now I feel like backtracking on that statement.)
What's more, I learned a lot about cricket! Which has a real benefit for me as a person living in a country in which a lot of people know a lot about cricket already. I still don't think I could speak intelligently about it with anyone, but I do know more than I've ever known about how it's played. I'm actually sort of eager to sit down and watch a real match.
I knew I had planned to watch Lagaan in this series, but after the fact I realized that it might have come up for me even if I didn't know it, by virtue of appearing on that list of Time Out's top ten Bollywood dance numbers, which I've made reference to several times throughout the series. As I was watching, I considered its possible appearance on this list, but disregarded it because none of the dance numbers, while certainly entertaining, seemed to rise to that level. Seeing which song made the cut after the fact -- a sequence called "Radha Kaise Na Jale" -- I'm not even sure I remember which one it was, since none of the numbers particularly made an impression as a superior example of Bollywood choreography. (Look at me, the expert on the topic now.) But I'm happy for the writer to have included it because this is, indeed, a superlative example of Bollywood filmmaking on every level, and why not dancing as well.
I don't really have anything negative to say about the movie. The characters are great, the actors charismatic. The heroes are dreamy and inspirational, the villains wonderfully hissable. It all comes together magnificently, and I'm sure it wouldn't have taken me nearly so long to watch it except that I tend to be distractible in these marathons in the first place, just because there's so much sitting involved. I also needed to interface with my family a couple times, as when they presented me my Father's Day presents, which was a lovely distraction indeed. Don't take my five-plus hours of watching as any indication of my thoughts on the movie.
The only even remotely negative thing I'll say is that it isn't a five-star movie. Not quite. For a person who tends to give out lots of 4.5 stars -- in fact, exactly 24 since the last time I gave out five -- I'm obviously really picky about the fives. I have to leave the movie with an absolute certainty of its near perfection, and with Lagaan, I just didn't quite get to that level.
But my, what a good movie this is.
And it can't help but seem downhill from here. I've got three more picks in Audient Bollywood, and they will have a hard time living up to Lagaan. But I'd like to pick up one more pre-2000 film, one more top ten dance film, and then one final title that actually had a minor cultural moment this year -- which I will explain when the time comes.
No comments:
Post a Comment