Lagaan Movie Subtitles In English

[Clinio Lofton]

Lagaantells the tale of the Indian village Champaner, beset by drought and British colonialism in the year 1893. Without a drop of rain in months, the worried villagers of Champaner decide to ask the local authorities for a temporary repeal of their taxes -- the hated lagaan. Led by the heroic Bhuvan (Indian superstar Aamir Khan) they bring their plight to the military governor, Captain Russell (Paul Blackthorne). But the sadistic Russell threatens to raise the lagaan threefold, unless the villagers can beat his men at a game of cricket, in which case he'll lift taxes on the entire province for a period of three years. Bhuvan accepts the challenge, but there's a problem -- no one in Champaner knows how to play cricket. A band of misfits come to the rescue, coached by Russell's soft-hearted sister Elizabeth (Rachel Shelley), and the race is on to be ready in three months' time. An epic reworking of Victory with eye-popping song-and-dance routines.

Since so many of you are probably recovering from the scintillating and rare tie between England and India in the Cricket World Cup (England needed two runs on the last ball but only managed one), I thought that I would take up my bi-weekly space to recommend one of the best sports movies ever: Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001).

Two things make this lengthy Bollywood feature a must see for anyone. First, while it does indulge in the melodramatic tropes that riddle almost all sports films (underdogs, obstacles, impossible odds, villainous opponents), Lagaan does the melodrama as well as can it can be done. We genuinely want the underdogs to succeed and see the villains receive their rightful humiliation. Secondly, and most importantly, this film does a tremendous job of explaining the basic rules and parameters of the sport to the viewer who may be uninitiated into the Byzantine world of cricket. When I visited England a decade and a half ago, more than one cricket fan informed me that it would be useless to try to learn the rules; teaching string theory to a four year old would be easier.

Despite its subtitle, Once Upon a Time in India, the film is not an Indian or Bollywood style Western, nor does it owe much of a debt to Sergio Leone and the Italian Westerns. Rather, it is a big, bold Bollywood production, music and dance included, that seeks to tell a nationalistic Indian tale of rebellion against their English colonial oppressors. Nothing sells better on the Asian subcontinent, or other parts of the former British Empire, than the defeat and demise of the Union Jack. (I have always suspected that this is one of the reasons that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise sells so well world wide. Watching the British Navy get blown to bits is a hoot for many.)

Set in Victorian India, Lagaan tells the story of a small Indian village that is being slowly bled to death through the collection of taxes, lagaan, by the British authorities. At every turn the British humiliate and denigrate the Indians, be they Rajah or untouchable. The British soldiers and Indian villagers eventually make a bet; they will play a cricket match. If the villagers win, no lagaan. If the British soldiers win, triple lagaan. After initially thinking that the game so beloved by the British is a foolish, childish endeavor, the Indian villagers find that they possess the skills to compete, and they find a way to turn the most British of customs into an Indian creation. In this manner, Lagaan retells a common post-colonial sports story: the colonized take that which the colonizers hold dear and turn it against them while creating a new sense of identity that can only be forged within a colonial context. The West Indies and Australia are quite familiar with such narratives.

Yet it is even more gratifying to watch Bhuvan and his village team triumph. Like any cliched sports film, Lagaan waits until the last bowled ball to determine the outcome upon which the figurative survival of India depends. The film makes it impossible to not root for this most formulaic of outcomes.

So if you have some free time as you wait and see if the West Indies can re-capture their glory days or if Ricky Ponting will lead Australia to their fourth Cup in a row (fifth overall), check out Lagaan.

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