http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/07/18/DD1271.DTL
IN ORDER TO take advantage of the full cultural opportunities offered by the Bay Area, Tracy and I with our friends Chuck and Babs went down to Fremont to check out the Naz8, a mall multiplex devoted to the films of Bollywood, that is, to the Hindi-language movies made in Bombay, the largest film production center in the world.
I had seen Bollywood movies before. They are not art films. They are popular entertainments. Their defining characteristic is that, no matter what the plot is (spy thriller, star-crossed lovers, murder mystery, historical epic) there is always, always, singing and dancing. Sometimes the songs are entirely arbitrary, as though rap-music videos had been dropped randomly into, say, “Pearl Harbor”; sometimes they are more integrated.
So there’s an amusement value on several levels. Also, when I went to www. naz8.com, I realized that the concession stand might be worth the drive all by itself. Samosas! Mango ice cream! Prapri chaat, a kind of chickpea, potato and yogurt thingie! Plus popcorn.
Naz8 is the friendliest movie palace anywhere. Everyone is happy to see you.
CDs are available. Amazing posters line the walls. Great lobby scene. Old and young alike.
We picked “Lagaan” because it was the only one with English subtitles. “Good choice,” said the woman who sold me the mango ice cream. “It’s the best movie here.”
And it was. Seriously now, being neither ironic nor arty, this may be the best movie I have seen this year. It’s “The Magnificent Seven” crossed with “The Bad News Bears,” only set in rural India with dance numbers and lots of cricket.
Oh, and it’s four hours long.
WE DIDN’T KNOW how long it was. We suspected only when the word “Intermission” scrolled across the screen at the two-hour mark. But it did not matter. Time for more food.
My friend Chuck, who is by profession a screenwriter, said, “This is the kind of stuff that Los Angeles has forgotten how to do. They learned it from Los Angeles, and now Los Angeles doesn’t even know what it is.” I swear to you:
Even though it was four hours long, and even though the last hour is taken up with one cricket game, I was not bored once. Really.
OK, SO THE “lagaan” of the title is a tax paid in grain to British overlords. The year is 1896; the cruel Raj is oppressing a province in Rajasthan. There has been a drought, and yet the cruel Brits are demanding lagaan. They curl their lips and sneer at the worthy peasants.
The British amuse themselves by playing cricket. Our hero, a handsome peasant lad played by superstar Aamir Khan, remarks that it is a silly game. The colonel says, “Ah so? Well, then, if you villagers can beat the British army in a game of cricket, I will suspend the lagaan for three years.”
So one by one, the village cricket players are found. Each has a story. A Muslim agrees to join to team. Our hero reaches out to an untouchable, whose withered hand, it turns out, is perfect for throwing what we might call a curveball.
(Cricket is sort of like baseball; you can follow the game by using baseball analogies, except the wickets have no counterpart. Batters wish to protect the wickets from being knocked over. And what we would call “pitching” is called “bowling.” It’s . . . look, you’ll learn as you go. And actually it doesn’t matter.)
Oh, and then there’s the British woman who helps them learn the rules, and the village beauty (Gracy Singh) who of course loves our hero, and I haven’t even gotten to the great production numbers.
Take a chance; take a ride; take a samosa.