lagaan

Just finished the nearly 4-hour Lagaan in Asian film class this afternoon. Great Bollywood film, nice set designs of the British cantonment and the nearby village, colorful dance sequences, but these are secondary to the main plot of a poverty-stricken 19th century Indian village overcoming their religious differences(Hindu, Muslim, Sikh and Untouchable unite to form a united front) as well as their pompous British masters in cricket, a generation before the nonviolent independence movement took the struggle to a higher level, culminating in August 1947.

Interestingly, Elizabeth(Rachel Shelley), the sister of Lagaan's villain, Captain Andrew Russell, instead of cheering on her compatriots, goes over to the other side and teaches Bhuvan(Aamir Khan--his surname denotes his Muslim faith--Bollywood's rules allow the intermingling of people with different religions without resorting to communal violence)the rudiments of the arcane sport. I wonder how a woman dressed in Victorian finery can move about the hot Indian countryside without breaking a sweat.

The setpiece of Lagaan, the 3-day cricket match is straight out of the Rocky films, or even Stephen Chow's Shaolin Soccer--amateurish underdogs taking a lot of punishment before defying the odds and winning in a close contest. The playing styles of Bhuvan's team are very unorthodox--one member has a windmill pitching style, while another player favors a full-frontal batting stance shouting fearsome yells and another man uses his cricket bat to obscure the pitcher's view of his opponent's wickets--meaning the three vertically-positioned sticks behind.

The period setting of Lagaan was dated 1893-the same year Mahatma Gandhi, who was then a newly-qualified barrister, went to South Africa to practice law and eventually fine-tune his pacific campaign to oust the British from the subcontinent.