Lagaan

[osprey_archer]

YOU GUYS YOU GUYS, I have just seen the best movie ever! It is Lagaan, a four hour long Bollywood epic answer to David Lean, which tells the story of an Indian village which played a cricket match against the local British cantonment. If they win, the lagaan, or land tax, will be repealed for three years. If they lose...it will be tripled!

Our hero is Bhuvan, who does not believe in buttons. All of his shirts have them, but he never actually uses them. When we first meet him, he’s spent the morning scaring away the gazelles that the leader of the local British cantonment, Captain Evil Mustache (he has a real name, but also a patently evil mustache), is attempting to hunt.

Captain Evil Mustache is approximately as over-the-top evil as it is possible for a character to be while still actually seeming believable as a human being. Driven by overwhelming arrogance and an unpleasant penchant for toying with people, he is the sort of person who yearns for nothing more than high office but should never be put in charge of anything.

When Captain Evil Mustache catches Bhuvan in the act of scaring off the gazelles, he threatens to shoot Bhuvan on the spot. Bhuvan stares him down, his manly bosom heaving and his eyes flashing defiance in the face of death. Captain Evil Mustache, presumably disappointed by the fact that Bhuvan is not cowering in terror, shoots a helpless adorable bunny instead.

When they meet again later, after Bhuvan and his fellow villagers have come to dispute the yearly lagaan (which Captain Evil Mustache doubled, more or less for his own amusement), Captain Evil Mustache sees another opportunity to humiliate Bhuvan: he suggests the wager on the cricket match.

Bhuvan: I accept!
Everyone else in the village: What is this madness? We’re going to lose, and then we’re all going to starve to death!
Bhuvan: No! We must stand up to the oppressors! I am the spirit of the new India!
Gauri, the beautiful village girl: I believe in you, Bhuvan!

Captain Evil Mustache’s sister, Elizabeth, is appalled by her brother’s complete lack of a sense of fair play (and also filled with admiration by Bhuvan’s heaving, manly chest). She decides to teach the villagers the secret ways of cricket, and also falls in love with Bhuvan, which naturally requires a scene where she dashes around the strangely deserted cantonment in an unlikely and extremely fluttery dress singing “I’M IN LOOOOOOOOOOVE.”

(Alas for Elizabeth, Bhuvan is already in love with Gauri. In the end Elizabeth goes back to England, where she never marries because she holds her love for Bhuvan in her heart forever.)

But Gauri has another suitor, Lakha! Lakha is so enraged that Gauri loves Bhuvan rather than him that he goes to the British cantonment to tell Captain Evil Mustache that Elizabeth has been helping the villagers. Captain Evil Mustache (proving himself stunningly inept in this one facet of evil) attempts to forbid Elizabeth to visit the village again, which has approximately zero effect. More successfully, he recruits Lakha to join the village cricket team and act as his spy.

With Lakha, Bhuvan has achieved ten of the eleven players that he needs. But how will he find the eleventh?

Bhuvan: I have found us the perfect player. He was an arm problem that gives him an awesome curveball.
Everyone else in the village: But Bhuvan! He’s an untouchable!
Bhuvan: In the spirit of the new India, I embrace all men as my brothers! The untouchable shall play with us!

(Bhuvan’s cricket team, in keeping with the spirit of the new India, also contains a Sikh and a Muslim player.)

And then there is a cricket match! My understanding of cricket is approximately on par with my understanding of American football (which is to say basically nil), but the cricket scenes are nonetheless tense and exciting. The whole movie is pretty much made of awesome.

Comments

[goldjadeocean.livejournal.com]

I adore this summary.

Re:

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

I love Lagaan! So amazing! I think my favorite part is Elizabeth's Disney princess musical number. But all of it is pretty great.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh my goodness, that is exactly what her musical number is! There's even a villain with an evil mustache.

If Disney and Bollywood ever team up, then something truly astounding might happen.

[motetus.livejournal.com]

Lagaan is awesome! But even though I did like Bhuvan and his manly, shirt-defying chest, I kind of wish Gauri and Elizabeth had ended up together...

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

How would that work? Most of their relationship consisted of Gauri pouting in Elizabeth's general direction while Elizabeth stared dewy-eyed at Bhuvan's shirt-defying chest. Would Gauri try increasingly desperate measures to distract Elizabeth's attention from her man, somehow ending in a make-out session in the hay?

[motetus.livejournal.com]

No clue! My shipping it came about purely because a) they're both so pretty and b) my knee-jerk reaction to two women pining over one man is MORE LESBIANISM. Realistically, I don't know how it'd work, because both Gauri and Elizabeth are just so smitten with Bhuvan. So you'd either have to OT3 it up, or get have Bhuvan tragically die, and that would just be meeeaan.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Oh! Oh! Maybe, in future years, Bhuvan will die (heroically fighting the British somehow, obvs.), and Elizabeth will come back to India to...cry at his grave or something...and she and Gauri will meet, and they will team up to fight imperialism together! And things will grow from that.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh I have wanted to watch Lagaan for years, but in the past, it wasn't available from Netflix, but NOW IT IS. I am putting it in my queue.

I've wanted to see it ever since seeing a music video from it--Radha Na Jale, I think it was called--oh, here it is (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NBcJlwENFs): Radha na kaise jale!

So glad the movie is as good as the song promised!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Netflix has been very inconsistent about Lagaan! I had it in my queue years ago, and then suddenly they didn't have it anymore. So frustrating...but now it's back, so all is well.

[inspirethoughts.livejournal.com]

Thanks for watching it. This movie was nominated for Oscar, but unfortunately did not win. One of the epic performances for Aamir Khan (played as Bhuvan in the movie).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's too bad that it didn't win! It's a pretty awesome movie.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I just saw it! A Sikh and a Muslim and an untouchable, and also a doctor and a holy man and a little kid, and a mute guy--really broad representation; that was great! Though, as the ninja girl pointed out, they thought they'd brush aside the historical improbability of welcoming an untouchable to the team, but it's too much of a stretch to have a woman? Apparently so. Unless you count Elizabeth. We both agreed it would have been great if she could have helped them solely from a sense of fair play and justice and not fallen in love with Bhuvan, but of course his magnetic attraction demands that she does fall for him. And it's funny, even though I'd read your entry, I had somehow conjured up in my mind that she was able to transfer her affections to someone else! So when it got to the part about her carrying her love of Bhuvan with her forever and never marrying I was like, WHAT.

The cricket was gloriously incomprehensible! He hits it and runs! He hits it but stands still but that's okay too! He gets hit by the ball but it's not a foul (?? What is it with breaking people's legs and whacking people in the head with the ball that's not illegal? IS THIS A BLOOD SPORT, ENGLAND??)

Anyway, I really loved it.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't it have been great if Gauri got to play? But alas, it was not to be.

And I so agree about Elizabeth. It would have been nice if she didn't fall for Bhuvan and sided with them simply out of a sense of fair play, and it also would have been nice if she had eventually gotten over Bhuvan instead of pining for him forever and ever.

Maybe she didn't just sit in the window and stare piningly at his photograph until she died. Maybe when she got back to England she started working against imperialism?

The upper class English do love their blood sports. Maybe they were like, "How can cricket be a real sport if it doesn't sometimes maim people?" and therefore spent the entire nineteenth century trying to come up with ways to injure people with a cricket ball.