From not paying heed to peers’ advice to taking 'Lagaan' to Oscars, producer-actor Aamir Khan discusses it all as his masterpiece completes 20 years
A still from the 'Lagaan'
In theory, 'Lagaan' (2001) is the classic underdog story. But on screen, it transformed into a masterpiece, becoming so much more than the David-versus-Goliath premise. Steeped in India’s history, the movie spoke of the oppression meted out to Indians during the British Raj, while questioning our country’s social evils of casteism and untouchability. It’s hardly surprising that the gem came from one of Hindi cinema’s brightest minds, Aamir Khan. Such was his faith in director Ashutosh Gowariker’s material that the actor turned producer with the magnum opus, mounting it on a budget unheard of in the early 2000s.
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As the film completes 20 years today, Khan remembers Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar had advised him before he took the project on floors in Gujarat. “Karan and Adi were concerned for me. They said, ‘We heard you are planning it as a single-schedule shoot and [will employ] sync sound.’ They advised me against both ideas, stating that no one has used sync sound for years. But I went ahead [with my instinct]. The experiment was so successful that since then, I have only done sync sounds and all my projects have been filmed over one long schedule. It made me realise that I was thinking in the right direction,” says the superstar.
Aamir Khan
In the two decades since its release, Lagaan has earned a place among the finest films of Indian cinema. The actor believes that the lion’s share of the credit goes to former wife Reena Dutta. “The one thing that has remained with me is the way Reena handled the film. I told her one night that I would need her help in producing the film. She said, ‘I don’t know anything about filmmaking. How will I help you?’ But then, she went on to meet producers to understand [what the job entails], cracked it and produced Lagaan as if she was a veteran. Till date, I wonder how a person, belonging to another field, came and took complete control over the project.”
Karan Johar and Aditya Chopra
The sports drama became the third Indian film to be nominated at the Oscars for the Best Foreign Language Feature Film. “I was disappointed that we lost. A lot of people then asked me what I could’ve done differently so that Lagaan could have won at the Oscars. But they fail to appreciate that the members in the foreign language committee loved our film, which is why it was among the top five nominees. That means nothing was wrong with our film.”
Also Read: Did you know Shamita Shetty had turned down Lagaan for Mohabbatein?
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