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COVER STORY: LAGAAN
Breaking The Mould
With Lagaan Aamir Khan, one of India's biggest and
most accomplished movie stars, turns producer. A gripping period drama,
the film changes every Mumbai formula. After a prolonged drought it gives
cineastes classy cinema.
By V. Shankar Aiyar
Deep in
the dust bowl called the Hindi heartland, a sadistic British officer challenges
Bhuvan, a feisty villager battling both drought and the colonial master,
to a game of cricket. A victory would exempt Bhuvan's people from paying
tax (Lagaan) for three years; defeat would result in the imposition of
triple the tax. The villagers demur: cricket is phirangi gilli danda and
triple tax is starvation cubed. Bhuvan doesn't baulk, he plays for broke-and
triumphs. Bhuvan is played by Aamir Khan. Bhuvan could well have been
Aamir Khan.
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's as remarkably
oddball a film as is the man behind it. It's hatke, Mumbai slang for different,
for so many reasons that if it takes the box office by storm, it could
become a landmark in Indian cinema.
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LOCALES: Aamir with villagers in Gujarat where the film was shot
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This may sound like the usual publicity piffle.
Aamir, after all, has been selling his magnum opus with the perseverance
of a lead banker marketing an IPO. He has done the rounds of Delhi, screened
the film for the prime minister, visited the television studios, met every
journalist in Mumbai and gone on roadshows from London to Sun City. All
along though, he has revealed only what he wanted to, held forth on only
that portion of the film he deigned to. The man knows his product. Even
better, he knows his mind. It makes him the ideal candidate to make history-on
and off-screen.
Let's consider why. One, Lagaan is a period drama
set in the 1890s, an audacious gamble in a film industry that like Henry
Ford seems to have come to believe that "history is bunk". Two,
as against the aspirational mores and MTV mush invoked by the formula
puppy love stories, you needn't leave your brains behind when you walk
in to see this film. The characters speak Avadhi-tutors were hired for
even Indian actors to ensure the right inflexion-and wear dhoti-kurtas
or ghagra-choli gear that a chocolate cream star wouldn't be caught dead
in. Take the hits of the past few years: boy meets girl and says Kaho
Naa Pyaar Hai in New Zealand or a schoolmaster teaches in an elite school
set in the English countryside (Mohabbatein). For an option, Kuch Kuch
Hota Hai in the college Archie studied at. Everybody wears jeans and when
the hero wants to dress formally he puts on a T-shirt.
In contrast, Lagaan is the revenge of the proletariat.
The actors sport the lean, hungry look-not of an Amitabh Bachchan in Deewar
but perhaps of a Balraj Sahni in Do Bigha Zameen.
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Takes On Lagaan
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MONEYSPINNER: Filmed on a Rs 25
crore budget, Lagaan has accrued Rs 20 crore from domestic
and overseas territories and Rs 4 crore for its music rights.
OUT CAST: With two-film flop director
Ashutosh Gowarikar at the helm, it stars little-known Gracy Singh
and a motley bunch of British actors.
PLAYING WITH THE PAST: Set in 1890s
Uttar Pradesh, it's an epic whose characters speak Avadhi, wear
period costumes and use cricket to defeat the British.
SANDS OF TIME: Stretching across
three hours and 42 minutes it's probably the longest Hindi film
since Mera Naam Joker.
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Next comes the film's mammoth three hour and
42 minute length, allowing the screening of only three as opposed to the
usual four shows a day. This meant a lower price per territory, but Aamir
insists he had factored that in: "It's very simple. You calculate
the possible returns and control the costs." It's the sort of economics
that will work only "if the film succeeds". On this point, however,
history is not on Aamir's side. Aside from the relative aversion to homegrown
epics (see accompanying story), there's the question of the audience's
patience.
Thirty years ago, Raj Kapoor made what he considered
his magnum opus, Mera Naam Joker, a film so long it had two intervals.
It bombed, almost rendering India's biggest filmmaker bankrupt. Today,
the cinegoer's attention span is, if anything, shorter. Even so, Aamir
is unperturbed by the past imperfect, "From Mughal-e-Azam to Gladiator,
period films have done well. The audience simply wants to enjoy a good
film. Period."
The implication is obvious: Lagaan will score
not because of its theme but because Aamir believes it's an outstanding
film. Other than the actor-producer himself, music director A.R. Rahman
and Bachchan's voice as the sutradhar, there are no big names associated
with Lagaan. Heroine Gracy Singh was last seen (or missed) in a forgettable
film. The director, Ashutosh Gowarikar, has two flops to his (dis)credit.
If you throw in a sprinkling of British actors and accents, you have a
motley crew not quite guaranteed to succeed. So what made Aamir back this
darkest of dark horses?
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ENTERTAINING HISTORY: Aamir, in a still from Lagaan with
co-star Gracy Singh, says period films are not an issue: "People
just want to enjoy a film. Period."
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It's not that actors don't turn producers. Douglas
Fairbanks and Mary Pickford helped found United Artistes along with Charlie
Chaplin. Sly Stallone makes his own films. In India, from Dev Anand and
Manoj Kumar downwards, a host of big stars have gone into production (see
accompanying story). Yet Aamir taking charge of Lagaan was not an ordinary
career move.
The son of producer-director Tahir Hussain had
promised himself he would never produce a film. However, when he was first
narrated the script of Lagaan, he loved it. He also trusted Gowarikar's
talent but, given the Rs 25 crore budget and the fact that a six-month
shoot on location meant keeping busy big stars out, wondered which producer
would back the project. One morning he found the answer in the mirror.
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