Lagaan Illuminates Cricket ( the game not the grasshopper)
I recommend Lagaan. It is a Bollywood movie with a difference. I sat down to watch it after the trauma of voting in the European elections. At the start I did not know whether I would last the course as it is a rather wordy, archaic film, but its charm grew and by the end Significant and I were entranced . It tells the story of a cricket match between an Indian village team and their local British overlords. There is a stake on the game: the tax, Lagaan. If they lose they have to pay double tax, and if they win they do not have to pay any tax for three years. The village of course wins, but in order to do so they have to put together a team which includes a Sikh, a Saddhu, a Moslem, a disabled Untouchable and bunch of woodcutters and farmers. The film makers managed to find eleven of the most unprepossessing English actors to act the Villainous English team which they did with gusto. The acting was uniformly bold and bad and delightful, like two hours of top class charade. But it was a moving moral tale. The villagers had to overcome their differences and their caste prejudices in order to fight for their very survival. As with all Bollywood films song and dance acts were interspersed with the action, but the songs were beautiful devotional hymns to Lord Krishna, sung in that extraordinary high pitched treble that only Indian film stars seem to be able to achieve. The cricket match itself formed a large part of the film and was bliss. At the end of it Significant declared that she had finally understood what cricket was all about. High praise.
sounds really excellent. films about sport are normally uniformally bad but this sounds great.
nice to see a post up here about cricket too, although here in the uk we’re obsessing today about a footballer, ronaldo, who’s been sold for 80 million pounds….
http://fsn.typepad.com/blog/
Terrific. I think I saw that film once on an airplane. Was there a strange wooshing noise every time the cricket ball went into the air?
Im a bit deaf, and didnt notice any whooshing sound, but Ill ask Sig. Or it could have been the jet engines of course
As I recall, there is no whooshing sound during the match in Lagaan. Trust me, Freddy, you would remember if you saw this one. It runs nearly four hours. I agree that it’s one of the better Hindi films out there.
Four hours isn’t bad for a movie about Cricket, assuming it’s a Test Match, I guess.
I’ve yet to see Lagaan, but it comes highly recommended. Anyone who wants to see the Hindi film at it’s most depressing will enjoy the original DevDas. That’s a good story, but also long. Am I the only person who takes a paperback to the theater or surfs the web while watching movies at home?
Indian film stars don’t do their on singing. “playback’ singers do.
lage Raho munnabi is a good ‘moral’ tale too- a ‘ghost’ of gandi helps a thug win the heart of a girl while helping to save her home from being stolen…it sounds wierd..but only bollywood can pull it off.
Also Swades, http://swades.com/index1024.html which was made by the same director as laagon this time, for once no English bad guy- its actually a really cool tale of self sufficieny – GREAT music too.
matt s – also if you like Devdas, Parineeta is great ( 2006 version) it is based on work by the same bengali writer (chaterjee) as Devdas same fatalism but happier
Lage Rahoo Munnabi is a great moral tale too – about the ghost of ghandi helping people fight corruption – a comedy but it works
and swades by the same director as laagoon is, i think, better than laagon- great music and a great ‘self help’ tale — and a healthy patriotism that the US and, needless to say UK, sorely lacks.
Thankyou , Matt and Malcom for your suggestions. We will get onto Love film.com instantly and order them up. Do you know of any good quality Tamil films. We spent a month in Tamil Nadu this winter and fell in love with it. We went to one Tamil film, which was dreadful and incomprehensible, and only saved by the ambience provided by the audience who chattered and joked all the way through it as if they were at a party.
Septimus:
Sure do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandukondain_Kandukondain
Starring Tabu (namesake) and Aiswayra Rai, based loosely on Sense and Sensibility. Composer is AH Rahman (who won the oscar for what i thought was a mediocre song though I like his other stuff.
Actually often bollywood (hindi) takes plots from Tamil films. Its a huge industry but it doesn’t get as much press here.
Ps
Matt do you mean the 1950s Devdas? or the one with Madhuri Dixit/Shah Ruk Khan/ Ashway Rai? I haven’t seen the 1950s one…
I did the see the 50s parineeta and I like the 2006 version much bettter- and that has one of the best soundtracks of any hindi film
PS SW: did you know many of the lyrcists are literally poets (often going back several generations – they went to bollywoodo when the court poetry biz collapsed)
This scene is what helped propel bollywood to the world stage (its enormously popular in the middle east, russia, asia)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOOlgbfFy3k
No I didn’t, Malcom. How fascinating, and thanks for the U. tube link.