Kartikey Sehgal

The film Lagaan has a captivating screenplay. It mixes reality with fantasy and entertains while projecting the plight of the villagers.

The men of this village wear ironed clothes of different colours. The women are healthy despite subsisting on a sukhi roti. Festivals are celebrated with élan and the dances are passionately synchronised. The village is happier than you would expect it to be under the economically cruel British rule.

Let’s remove fantasy from the realm of tangibility and see it as dream and imagination. Villagers imagine living a furnished life in city homes. They dream of sleeping beside a stream under the shade of generous branches. They visualize a night of liquor and games despite slaving their days in search of work. Fantasy is within human beings and it is not always important to give it a physical shape in clothes, dances and celebrations.

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A man walking on the road is inattentive to the group of men chattering and drinking. We see him walk the breadth of the illuminated road and then he disappears into the darkness. The group of men may have disturbed or amused him; reminding him of his daughter or his home in a hill town. We did not see any emotional indicator on his passive face. Perhaps the close up of his face and the angle of camera conveyed a sense of despair or superiority; we don’t know. Was it required of him to reveal his inside through facial movements? Or is the tremor beneath a calm surface a common human denominator?