New Delhi: Filmmaker Anurag Kashyap says “Lagaan” and its making taught the industry a lot and made it possible for him to explore a two-part story like “Gangs of Wasseypur”.
“Lagaan”, directed by Ashutosh Gowariker and starring Aamir Khan and a host of supporting actors from theatre, completed 25 years of its release on June 15.
The period sports drama is about a cricket match between a group of untrained villagers and their colonial masters. Led by Aamir’s Bhuvan, the ragtag team ultimately wins the game in a David-versus-Goliath-like story.
In a chat with Aamir Khan Productions, Anurag shared a hilarious anecdote about why Lagaan stood out for him even before the release and said, “What stood out for me before even watching the film, Ashu (Ashutosh Gowariker) went to Kutch to shoot with a head full of hair, came back bald. The first thing was the way they were shooting the film. We heard that they were doing sync sound, and sync sound was something that was absent at that time. I think it restarted with Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai.”
He added, “And I was very determined when I was doing Paanch, I said I also want to do sync sound. The way they went about the film changed a lot of things in this industry. A very organised way of shooting, controlling your budgets, the process of making that film has taught the whole industry a lot.”
Anurag recalled that Lagaan had an unusually long production process, with filming lasting six to eight months. He said that many people in the industry were eagerly awaiting the film’s completion and release, a process that took more than a year. During that period, he was performing in a play produced by Aamir Khan at Mumbai’s Prithvi Theatre, while several members of the theatre team were also involved in Lagaan.
Anurag remembered watching the film on its opening day at Gaiety Galaxy and admitted that there was considerable anxiety about how audiences would respond to a period drama with a runtime of nearly three hours and forty minutes. However, as the film progressed, those concerns quickly disappeared. He said that by the halfway mark, viewers were no longer simply watching the story unfold on screen; they felt emotionally invested in the cricket match and began cheering for the characters as though they were spectators inside the film itself.
He recalled predicting an Oscar nomination for the film as a joke and said, “And when Kachra comes to bowl and all that, we were like literally off our seats. And I was literally excited, and I said, ” This film is going to go to the Oscars. And that was like a joke. And then after that, we heard that it was screening at Locarno at Piazza Grande, and from that screening, the noise that it created was something else. And we were very happy because you know the film had been released with Gadar. And most of the mainstream popular audience was going for Gadar.”
He concluded, “But it was always like you’re in the stadium watching, you’re in the film. And this was the first film that had that kind of an impact in a very, very long time. If Lagaan had not worked, then we as filmmakers would not have been able to make films like Wasseypur and all. That kind of duration, length, like if you hold on to the story of the film and you don’t feel like it’s three hours and forty minutes. Today, the industry that we are working in is like the children of Lagaan in a way.”
