Rating: 3/5
Anti-Criterion Challenge 2024 | 38/52 | Music by A.R. Rahman
Champaner, 1893 The agricultural village of Champaner gives a lagaan (a portion of the farmer’s harvest) to the king as a tax. The king, Raja Puran Singh, keeps one share and gives the rest to the British, who promise to protect the king from neighboring attacks while promising the other kings protection from Raja Singh. It is monsoon season, and the village has seen no rain all year.
Bhuvan throws rocks at impalas to startle them and prevent British Captain Andrew Russell from shooting them. He catches on and threatens to shoot Bhuvan the next time he tries. Russell meets with Raja Singh, who hopes to clear a way for his people to pray at Siddheshwar temple. The village believes that praying there will end their hardships. Raja Diler Singh, an enemy of Raja Puran Singh and a friend of Andrew Russell, rules the land. Russell will do it if the king, a Hindu, will eat meat. The king, of course, refuses, so Russell doubles the lagaan.
On hearing the news, Bhuvan leads a group to speak to the king and plead for a waiver. The guards make the men wait while the Britsh play cricket. They observe the similarities in this game to the kid’s game, gillidanda. The ball rolls over to the men, and Bhavan picks it up, so they arrest him. The king hears their plea, as does Captain Russell. Russell offers to cancel the tax if they beat the British in a game of cricket. If they lose, the British will triple the tax.
As a nearly 4-hour film (aka average length Bollywood picture), it takes around 45 minutes for the premise to come into focus. As an underdog tale, it also lends itself to criticizing the caste system and allowing someone of a lower caste to join the team based on their skill. It’s not complex or anything, but it’s there.
The movie lacks any tension until the final 45 minutes when the movie lets us non-cricket watchers in on what needs to happen for a win. I still relied on when characters cheered or groaned to know, but at least I had a foothold.
Similar to how Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon introduced many Westerners to wuxia, this movie introduced them to Bollywood epics. Both hoped to make these regional films more popular in the US, but neither made any impact beyond their award-winning years. R.R.R. came out 20 years later with similar hopes for Tollywood, but no dice.
While this is a better-made movie than R.R.R., it lacks the absurd physical feats that made R.R.R. such a blast. This movie, however, has much better music, thanks to A.R. Rahman. They’re different cultures, so it’s like comparing mandarins to pomelos. But still, this movie has some catchy songs.
Gracy Singh, who plays Gauri, is the best actor in the movie. She hits the sweet spot between comic and sincere, even when the script relegates her character to pine after Bhuvan. Aamir Khan commits to the stoic expressionlessness of a handsome protagonist whose intrigue comes second.
This movie is surprisingly easy to watch for its 4-hour runtime. But much of what it does isn’t what I enjoy watching, whether Hollywood or Bollywood.