(2) Watch hindi movie 'Lagan and write the crities of
the movie in about 500-600 words
Answers
"Lagaan" is an enormously entertaining movie, like nothing we've ever seen before, and yet completely familiar. Set in India in 1893, it combines sports with political intrigue, romance with evil scheming, musical numbers with low comedy and high drama, and is therefore soundly in the tradition of the entertainments produced by the Bombay film industry, "Bollywood," which is the world's largest.
I have seen only five or six Bollywood movies, one of them in Hyderabad, India, in 1999, where I climbed to the highest balcony and shivered in arctic air conditioning while watching a movie that was well over three hours long and included something for everyone. The most charming aspect of most Bollywood movies is their cheerful willingness to break into song and dance at the slightest pretext; the film I saw was about a romance between a rich boy and a poor girl, whose poverty did not prevent her from producing back-up dancers whenever she needed them.
The story takes place at the height of the Raj, England's government of occupation in India. In a remote province, the local British commander is Capt. Russell (Paul Blackthorne), a lip-curling rotter with a racist streak, who insults the local maharajah to his face and thinks nothing of whipping a Hindu upstart. Even his fellow officers think he's over the top. He administers "lagaan," which is the annual tax the farmers must pay to their maharajah, and he to the British. It is a time of drought and hunger, and the farmers cannot pay.Enter Bhuvan (Aamir Khan), a leader among his people, who confronts Russell and finds his weak point: The captain is obsessed by cricket, and believes it's a game that can never be mastered by Indians. Bhuvan says it is much like an ancient Indian game, and that Indians could excel at it. Russell makes Bhuvan a bet: The Brits and a village team will play a cricket match. If the Indians win, there will be no lagaan for three years. If the Brits win, lagaan will be tripled. The villagers think Bhuvan is insane, since a triple tax would destroy them, but he points out that since they cannot pay the current tax, they have nothing to lose.
Bhuvan assembles and starts to coach a local team. Elizabeth Russell (Rachel Shelley), the evil captain's sister, believes her brother's deal is unfair, and secretly sneaks out to the village to provide pointers on cricket. Her closeness to Bhuvan disturbs Gauri (Gracy Singh), a local woman who has believed since childhood that she and Bhuvan are fated to marry. There's another coil of the plot with the two-faced Lakha (Yashpal Sharma), who wants Gauri for himself, and acts as a spy for Russell because he feels that if Bhuvan loses face, he'll have a better chance with her.