LONDON: Actor-producer
Aamir Khan's maiden venture Lagaan has stormed into the countrywide
box office Top 10 in Britain and has become a craze even among non-Asian
film goers.
Lagaan is a dream Aamir - one of India's biggest movie stars and most
accomplished actors - believed in so passionately that when it didn't
find a producer he donned the mantle himself.
It is the story of a peasant uprising against British rule in 1893.
Its budget of 4 million pound, inflated by attention to detail such
as flying in real English corsets and hats from London, is large by
Indian standards and the film is the first serious attempt by Bollywood
to make a "crossover" film to appeal to Indian and western
audiences in the mass market.
Lagaan is a Bollywood film with a difference - an Indian-made film featuring
15 British actors. It is proving so popular in mainstream west end cinemas
that crowds have had to be turned away this week.
Out of Lagaan's 3 hour 42 minute running time, a full hour is devoted
to a game of cricket, an intensely fought match between a group of British
soldiers and the residents of Bhuj in Gujarat. The film relates the
hardships of a village forced to pay tax to the British Raj after years
of drought. They appeal to the local British administrator, played by
television actor Paul Blackthorne, and he agrees to waive the tax for
three years if they can beat a British team at cricket - a game the
villagers have never seen. The climax is the crucial match. The game
of cricket has a strong modern feel to it with lots of sledging and
intimidation by the British and even match fixing. The dialogue is in
Hindi and English and out of 29 prints of the film released here - some
at mainstream cinemas such as the Odeon Piccadilly - 22 are sub-titled.
Lagaan was shot in Bhuj six months before the region was devastated
by an earthquake. Proceeds from the exhibition will go to the area's
earthquake fund.
The film has become the first commercial Hindi film to get what one
critic described as the "nearest thing to a full mainstream release
that any Bollywood picture has yet achieved" and has come to London
after raking in an estimated 300,000 pound in other parts of Britain.
Its promoters expect it to join the big league of such Mandarin Chinese
hits as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in persuading a mainstream audience
to pay to see a sub-titled Asian film.
Favourable reviews in leading British dailies, the Guardian and the
Daily Telegraph and on Radio 4, the most cerebral of BBC's radio channels.