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The Cricketing of an Indian Village
By DAVE KEHR

Based in Bombay, the Hindi film industry — affectionately known as Bollywood — is one of the largest in the world, but its products are rarely seen beyond India and the Indian communities abroad. The musical "Lagaan," however, has leapt over the usual boundaries. It became a genuine popular success in London last year, crossing over to a general audience, and now it is reopening in New York, after having played the Indian neighborhoods last summer, and opening in Los Angeles. Its New York venue is the Film Forum in the South Village, where the regular audience of refined filmgoers might be expected to view "Lagaan" with condescension.

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That would be wrong. Nearly four hours long — about standard length for a Hindi film — and filled with extravagant production numbers, impossibly attractive performers and a generous selection of classic melodramatic devices, "Lagaan" may look naïve; it is anything but. This is a movie that knows its business — pleasing a broad, popular audience — and goes about it with savvy professionalism and genuine flair.

"Lagaan" is set during British rule in India, but the film has none of the nostalgia for the lost empire that typically informs both English and American films on the subject. Ashutosh Gowariker, who wrote and directed the film, portrays the British Army as conscienceless oppressors, who cynically play the local rajahs against one another while collecting protection money from them all. That money, called lagaan, is ostensibly a land tax, but effectively a tribute — paid by the local farmers to their local chief, who in turn pays off the English.

It hasn't rained for two years in Champaner, a village in sweltering central India, but Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne, who is a Billy Zane doppelgänger), the commander of the local British regiment, isn't about to give the parched villagers a break. He makes a bet with Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), the most spirited of the villagers (and of course, the handsomest), but only because he believes it's a sure thing: If the villagers can beat the British regiment in a cricket match, he'll cancel the land tax for two years; if the British win, the villagers will have to pay three times the normal, unreasonable amount.

Captain Russell feels confident because the villagers have absolutely no idea of how cricket is played. But Bhuvan believes that it is close enough to a game called gilli-danda" they all played as children, and with the clandestine assistance of the captain's sister, Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley), who's appalled by her brother's cruelty, Bhuvan begins putting together a team.

Mr. Khan, who plays Bhuvan, is one of India's two or three biggest stars, and he has the kind of pouty, smoldering good looks that are pinned to the walls of teenage girls' bedrooms the world over. The man is the center of the film, as is often the case in Bollywood movies, and he is fought over by two aggressive women — Gauri (Gracy Singh), the village girl who has loved him since they were children, and the stately Elizabeth, who, for a proper Victorian lady, has surprisingly little trouble with the idea of falling in love with an Indian peasant. Their rivalry is the basis of the film's best musical number, which finds Bhuwan and Gauri dancing out their love in the village, while Elizabeth, alone in her room in the forbidding English fortress, dreams of herself in a sari, snuggling up to Bhuvan in his humble village home.

Like many of the classic Hollywood musicals, "Lagaan" is a utopian fantasy of a perfect community, brought together in literal and figurative harmony. Drawing his players from the village outcasts and outsiders (the team includes both a Muslim and an untouchable), Bhuvan unites the farmers in a common front against their colonial exploiters — and even the local rajah, whose livelihood depends on the British, is drawn into the excitement of the match. The climactic tournament lasts three days and takes up, by rough estimate, some 80 minutes of screen time, as Mr. Gowariker wrings every conceivable drop of suspense out of a game that even after 225 minutes remains incomprehensible to the uninitiated.

"Lagaan" is perfectly positioned to be the first crossover Bollywood hit: like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," the first martial arts movie to make it into mainstream American theaters, it's a smooth, technically impeccable, somewhat denatured version of a culturally specific entertainment. There are none of the cameo appearances by Hindu gods and goddesses that Western audiences find off-putting, and the bouncy pop score, by the Bollywood master A. R. Rahman, avoids the higher registers that sometimes sound shrill to Western ears. The earth-toned cinematography by Anil Mehta and the densely populated, spatially complex wide-screen images created by Mr. Gowariker give the film a kind of visual assurance that is rare enough in any national cinema.

Coming on the heels of Baz Luhrman's heavily Bollywood-influenced "Moulin Rouge," "Lagaan" seems to confirm the globalization of the genre — a mixed blessing, as always. But as the makers of "Lagaan" well know, there's an irresistible pleasure in rooting for the underdog. If a bunch of impoverished farmers can humiliate the British Empire, why can't an Indian film do the same to Hollywood?

LAGAAN
Once Upon a Time in India

Written (in Hindi and English, with English subtitles) and directed by Ashutosh Gowariker; director of photography, Anil Mehta; edited by Ballu Saluja, Kumar Dave and Sanjay Dayma; music by A. R. Rahman, with lyrics by Javed Akhtar; production designer, Nitin Chandrakant Desai; produced by Aamir Khan; released by Sony Pictures Classics. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, South Village. Running time: 225 minutes, with an intermission. This film is rated PG.

WITH: Aamir Khan (Bhuvan), Gracy Singh (Gauri), Rachel Shelley (Elizabeth Russell), Paul Blackthorne (Capt. Andrew Russell), Suhasini Mulay (Yashodamai) and Kulbhushan Kharbanda (Raja Puran Singh).

The text of the review below has been taken from the prestigious 'The New York Times' American broadsheet newspaper as it appeared on May 8th 2002.