Bollywood Home » Bollywood Movies on Cricket » Lagaan Lagaan is a film of human triumph over oppression, about absolute grit and determination. It is about the power of love and humility for fellow human beings. Lagaan brought forward a simple story of a common village lad's determination to get himself and his fellow villagers out of the grips of a ruthless oppressor. The credit for the absolutely amazing direction of Lagaan goes to the immensely talented Ashutosh Gowarikar.

The story of Lagaan unfolds at a small and insignificant village in central India in the year 1893. Like thousand of villages all over India, the small village of Champner is also surviving on its generation of crops every year. The Rajas ruling theses villages pay the British rulers a fixed sum of compensation in return for protection against each other. The Rajahs pay the tax to the rulers in the form of agricultural produce collected from the villagers. This agricultural tax was named as 'Lagaan'.



Champaner is living the life that has been thrust over it. For years they have been giving away a part of their produce to their rajah in the form of tax. The rajah in turn gave the tax to a British cantonment's leader Captain Russell who has his establishment situated in the outskirts of the village. But this year, the monsoons have not provided their life giving drops even after 2 months of dry spell. All villagers are waiting with bated breaths. Their lives are dependent on the rains that just refuse to come.

And then suddenly, to make matters worse, a sudden announcement is made which states that all villagers would have to pay double tax that particular year. The villagers are left spell bound as to how they would achieve this impossible target, especially at a time when rains are unavailable.

Like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, a brave youth rises from the utterly impossible predicament to show his fellow villagers the path to forever bliss. The youth, played brilliantly by Aamir Khan, takes up a challenge with Captain Russell by challenging him to a game of cricket. Cricket was a game that had not even been heard about before in India and was strictly considered as an English man's game. The arrogant Captain takes up the challenge. The conditions set were that if the villagers loose they would have to pay double tax. But if they won, then their lagaan for 3 years would be waived off completely.

The following story progresses as 'Bhuwan', the brave youth, slowly manage to convince his village elders and fellow farmers to play the game. In his struggle he is assisted by a beautiful English girl played by Rachel Shelly and the love of his life, a simple village girl played by Gracy Singh.

The film portrays excellently the triumph of human spirit, courage and faith on the face of the most difficult and potent adversaries.

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