It was in Chennai musicworld, I got the first glimpse of a movie called’Lagaan’ that was about to come up. About this time of the year, few years ago. Aamir Khan was displaying his bandaged clinched fist on the posters. I thought it was some historical village movie and it was, but what surprised me was it was about cricket. Though it was fascinating to know that, I still had apprehensions about how the movie would be. But when the movie came it cast a spell on almost everyone who watched it. I was one of the lucky ones to finally catch up during the final week the movie was on theater.
Today, some seven years later, when my Lagaan DVD has got scratches after repeated watching it remains in my list of all time favorite movies and still close to my heart. Now before you get confused about what I am writing on, this write up is not a Lagaan movie review nor about this book(as the category says), but usual conveniently wrong-category thoughts on the documentary on Making of Lagaan’Chale chalo, the lunacy of film making’ by Satyajit Bhatkal.
I heard of this from Suresh(sureshmehcnit) and have been trying to grab a copy since he mentioned it to me. I finally managed to lay my hand on a VCD version yesterday and I canceled all my other works/appointments that were lined up in the evening(gym, cooking and eating) to spend time watching this. This one is like a usual’Making of the movie’ you would have seen on TVs on so many movies, only this one has life in it. It draws parallels to the movie itself. It portrays perfectly the pains the team went through. To see why’Lagaan’ could have failed easily, but stood up only to become a classic was nothing but fascinating.
(Link: https://lagaandvd.com)
I should admit I haven’t seen much documentaries, but this one was really impressive. The turn of events during the entire duration of film making made it more interesting than the way it was told. May be, I am overlooking the way this documentary was made but I do not know; I was so involved.
If you remember, most of the movie happens in a village hit by drought. Shooting a cricket match for a movie is not a joke and think of shooting it in such scorching sun, harassing winds and to add more trouble the noisy airfields nearby the shooting location. Actors don’t know cricket, English actors did not know Hindi and 10, 000 villagers(spectators) had to be brought together and managed. The entire movie making should have been a real pain. You can see/feel what the team went through.
Few events did not make it any easier for them - Ashuthosh Gowrikar gets a slip disc, the elderly villager character falls ill, the film budgets overshoots and runs way behind schedule and many more hurdles. The way they overcame all this, like Ashuthosh directing with a slip disc lying down on a bench, the old man finishing his scenes when he could hardly move(and later gets admitted in hospital) were inspiring. Aamir Khan singing’Aati kya kandala’ for the crowd and the crowd reaction being captured as reactions for the Lagaan match, two English actors falling in love and end up marrying in the temple built in the sets of Lagaan gave it a real nice feel as well.
If the movie Lagaan had drama, euphoria, hunger, pain, pride, excitement, romance, team spirit and all that you would go through in your life time, the making of the movie has all this as well. My only disappointment was the documentary had very few minutes to speak about the how the music for the movie and the editing process. With more of that it would have become a complete narration about movie making. Otherwise, if you like Lagaan or don’t like Lagaan, this one is a must watch.
I have high regards for Ashuthosh Gowrikar and was moved by his other film’Swades’ as well. If you think Swades was any less gripping than Lagaan, I would advise you to buy the DVD and watch it when IST would be few hours ahead or behind from yours. I already have couple of plans for the Valentine’s week:
First is to watch Jodhaa Akbar, Ashuthosh’s next movie and the second . is to watch it again.
Smiles,
Vinayak