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NEW YORK: A nearly four-hour, foreign-language film about a cricket match in hot, dusty India sounds like it might put an American audience to sleep. Instead it may help create a new international star.
“Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India,” the ballyhooed Indian hit now showing up in US movie houses, is perking up Hollywood to mainstream Indian cinema, famed for colourful plots and music so catchy that it inevitably sends the hips of Hindi film heroines gyrating.
“Lagaan” might also propel its star into the Hollywood spotlight, introducing a South Asian heartthrob to US audiences accustomed to East Asian stars like Jackie Chan and Chow Yun-Fat.
Aamir Khan is among the biggest movie stars in India, a country arguably unrivalled in its passion for movies and movie stars. A handsome 37-year-old known for carefully selecting his roles, Khan is now looking beyond Mumbai, the heartland of Hindi cinema, eyeing Hollywood and English-language films.
Like many educated Indians, English is Khan’s primary language, the one he thinks in, and he is keen to act in it.
“I haven’t read a single book in Hindi in my life because I don’t read Hindi very well,” he said in an interview. “If I’m speaking in Hindi I’m doing a quick translation.”
To break out of Hindi-only movies, Khan has picked up a Hollywood agent and toured the United States to promote “Lagaan”, which was nominated for best foreign language film in this year’s Academy Awards and is now in US theatres.
Khan has been well received, reportedly breaking bread with media bigshots at a Fifth Avenue dinner party, and is watching as “Lagaan” rakes in positive reviews in the US press.
FROM BOLLYWOOD TO HOLLYWOOD: Khan said he was shown seven or eight movie scripts during his recent stay in Los Angeles for the Oscars. But he tossed aside all of them.
“I was quite surprised to see so many scripts about Indian characters suddenly popping up,” he said.
Khan, made famous after starring in the 1988 romantic drama “Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak,” faces challenges in moving from Mumbai’s Bollywood film world to Hollywood.
“A lot of Indian actors here in New York and the US keep doing bit roles in Hollywood films by playing cab drivers and doctors,” said Aseem Chhabra, a New York-based freelance writer who focuses on Indian cinema.
Even though Hollywood producers could develop deeper roles, Chhabra said, Khan is likely to hold out for a part big enough to be appropriate to his fame with South Asian audiences.
The goal of speaking English is a bit of an irony for Khan, whose characters’ lack of English has been used as dramatic and comic fodder. In “Lagaan,” he plays a villager who fails to understand an expression of love spoken in English.
MORE THAN CRICKET: With music and dance numbers and a mostly Hindi script that runs nearly four hours — long even by Indian standards — “Lagaan” is comparable in structure to the hundreds of films a year produced by India’s film industry. But its story line and high production values set it apart for critics and audiences.
Lagaan tells the story of a fictional group of Indian villagers in 1893, suffering the dual hardships of a drought and the crippling taxes imposed by a British commander. The villagers are told they can avoid the tax if they defeat the British at cricket, a sport then unknown to the villagers.
In the film, Khan plays Bhuvan, a young farmer who rallies the village to take on the commander at cricket.—Reuters
