Anniversaries encourage the film industry to congratulate itself for virtues it has stopped practising. Twenty-five years after Lagaan, festival screenings and tributes have rightly returned to Ashutosh Gowariker’s improbable epic. Variety’s report on the Melbourne anniversary event recalls its international journey, while the Academy’s record of the 2002 ceremony preserves the famous nomination. I am happy to toast both. But I refuse to turn the film into a museum piece whose lesson is merely that Aamir Khan once wore a dhoti and made foreigners applaud. Lagaan matters because it contradicts nearly every timid excuse contemporary Hindi cinema offers for its creative habits.
It was a long period film with songs, cricket, colonial politics, subtitles, a large ensemble and a hero who could not defeat the empire by throwing one punch through a wall. It had a major star, yes, and nobody should pretend the project arrived without privilege or leverage. Yet that star used his power to enlarge the film rather than shrink it into a vanity vehicle. Bhuvan’s importance depends on a village full of distinct people. The climax works because we know the team, its weaknesses and the social barriers it has crossed. Compare that with the modern star vehicle in which supporting actors exist chiefly to announce that the hero has entered the room.
Scale without stupidity
Bollywood now confuses scale with noise. A large budget apparently requires digital skylines, franchise homework and an antagonist whose occupation is speaking slowly. Lagaan spent its scale on a world. The drought mattered. The tax mattered. The villagers’ scepticism mattered. Cricket rules had to be learned by characters and audience together. The film’s spectacle emerged from accumulated stakes, not from a trailer editor placing drums under six disconnected money shots.
Its length is often cited as evidence of a vanished audience patience. I think that flatters weak films. Viewers will sit when scenes alter relationships, deepen tension or supply pleasure. They become impatient when a screenplay circles the same revelation while saving plot for the next instalment. Lagaan earns its running time through recruitment, training, conflict and a match whose reversals are rooted in character. Kachra’s spin is not merely a sports trick; it pays off the team’s confrontation with exclusion. Good popular writing makes theme perform labour.
The casting looks even more radical now. The team is filled with actors who have faces, voices and rhythms distinct from one another. Today a producer might announce a “fresh ensemble” and populate it with professionally groomed relatives of people already in the industry, each photographed as though emerging from the same expensive salon. Nepotism’s defenders insist that audiences decide, which is true only after gatekeepers decide whom audiences may see. Lagaan reminds us that unfamiliarity is not a commercial defect when a director knows how to introduce a character.
A star used as infrastructure
Aamir Khan’s contribution should not be sentimentalised, but it should be understood. Producing the film meant attaching his market value to a proposal conventional wisdom considered hazardous. That is the best use of stardom: as infrastructure for an idea more ambitious than the star’s image. Too many actors now treat production companies as mechanisms for controlling lighting, casting friends and retaining intellectual property. The question is not whether a star produces. It is whether the star’s power makes cinema braver.
I can already hear the objection that today’s market is different. Theatre attendance is less habitual, streaming has changed discovery, marketing costs are brutal and opening weekends punish uncertainty. All true. None explains why so many expensive Hindi films resemble each other before they fail. Risk cannot be eliminated by repetition; it can only be made dull. A sequel with recognisable branding may improve initial awareness, but if every studio follows that logic, familiarity itself becomes a reason to stay home.
Lagaan also understood patriotism better than many contemporary films. It offered a clear oppressor, an Indian collective and an emotionally satisfying victory, yet it did not require every British character to be a cartoon. Elizabeth’s sympathy complicates the camp without confusing the injustice. The villagers have divisions of caste, religion, ego and fear. National feeling is built through their cooperation, not delivered as a monologue over a swelling flag. I like patriotic cinema; I dislike cinema that treats patriotism as protection from criticism.
What Bollywood should steal
The industry should not copy Lagaan’s surface. I do not want eleven tax dramas and a cinematic universe about nineteenth-century sports. It should steal the underlying confidence. Build a specific world. Cast actors for characters rather than surnames. Let songs carry narrative. Give the antagonist an intelligible position. Use a star to invite audiences into unfamiliar material. Most importantly, complete the story. The audience should leave satisfied, not feeling it has watched an advertisement for Part Two.
Writers also need authority. Lagaan is remembered for images and performances, but its machine is screenplay construction. Every team member provides a potential advantage and vulnerability; the match cashes those cheques with extraordinary control. Contemporary publicity praises actors for “living” roles while writers are barely mentioned unless a controversy requires someone to blame. Studios that underpay development eventually overspend on reshoots and marketing. There is no production design grand enough to disguise a missing second act.
Would Lagaan succeed if released for the first time today? I cannot know, and anyone claiming certainty is selling consultancy. It might struggle with show allocation or thrive as an event. The more revealing question is whether a major Hindi studio would approve it without demanding a franchise map, a younger romantic lead and three cameos. I suspect the pitch would be praised for passion and quietly buried under “market feedback.”
The anniversary celebration should therefore contain a little embarrassment. Bollywood possesses more money, technology and global access than it did in 2001, yet often displays less conviction. Its privileged newcomers arrive with publicity campaigns before demonstrating screen presence. Its stars protect brands so carefully that characters cannot surprise us. Its producers invoke audience taste after spending years narrowing the menu.
I still love Lagaan, not because it is flawless, but because its excesses belong to belief. It believes viewers can follow a new sport, care about a village and accept a star among character actors. Twenty-five years later, that faith feels more radical than the CGI revolutions advertised every Friday. Bollywood does not need to recover the past. It needs to recover the nerve that made the past worth celebrating.
