The year was 2001. It’s a year when India as a cricketing nation was going through an extremely tough phase. Only a few months back, a new Indian have started forming with a new captain who was given the responsibility to pull out the team from the infamous match fixing controversies and bring the team onto the winning course.
Much like the same situation, a 37-years old director Ashutosh Gowariker planned to write a screenplay which was based on a cricket team in India in the colonial era who, against all adversities, triumphed over the game. Gowariker knew that India is a cricket crazy nation and it has the biggest emotional content in the country, irrespective of caste, creed and language. Now, his idea was to combine the game of cricket and Indian revolution against the British Kingdom and that’s how the concept of one of the greatest sports dramas of all time, Lagaan was made.
Today, Lagaan celebrates its 20th release anniversary and we just can’t thank the cast and crew enough for making this marvellous film, at a time when technology was not that advanced as it is now. Co-incidentally this is the first movie produced by Aamir Khan himself and on an unprecedented budget at that time of almost 25 crores. Yes, maybe that amount could sound extremely less, but in the early 2000, it was one of the costliest films ever made in the country. The film also grabbed attention due to a number of reasons. Lagaan was one of the few films which featured prominent English actors such as Paul Blackthorne and Rachel Shelley. It was also the first film in a long time to feature the game of cricket as a theme.
The film was also one of few films at that time, shot in 50°c in the remote villages near Bhuj where no hotel or no proper infrastructure was present to accommodate the actors. They had to build makeshift apartments in the villages during the shoot.
The film received a number of accolades from the International fraternity. But the greatest achievement of the film was to get nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, 13 years after Salaam Bombay.
Inspired by 1957 movie Naya Daur, a sports drama film directed by B. R. Chopra, Lagaan almost single handedly catapulted Indian film industry in front of the world fraternity. Lagaan is still considered one of greatest films ever made in India and it established Aamir Khan as an ace film personality in the country.
Today, when the film is 20 years old, it’s safe to say that Lagaan was one one of the few artworks in the country who had and still have the ability to unite the entire population of India just like the game of cricket.
We’re hiring!
We are hiring two full-time junior to mid-level writers with the option to work remotely. You need to work a 5-hour shift and be available to write. Interested candidates should email their sample articles to [email protected]. Applications without a sample article will not be considered.
