Lagaan

Lagaan is the story of an Indian village joining together to fight the opression of the British officials through a game of cricket. It was interesting how the visual tropes in Lagaan showed realities of Indian culture. One of these visual tropes would be that, in more than one part of the movie, the British were running towards the camera, showing attack in a way. It put us sort of in a fearful position. The British were "protecting" the Indian people at the time period that the movie was set in, but it showed their hegemonic relationship or dominance over the Indian people. Until Bhuvan (the main character) rallied his village to fight this dominant force the Indian people had to consent to the British by paying the Lagaan and having the British officials make decisions that greatly affected their lives.



Another important visual trope in this movie is the use of the sky in the movie. Towards the beginning, there was a scene where the matriarch of the village was looking up at the sky and lamenting the lack of clouds. In order for them to grow their crops so they could pay their lagaan (tax) they needed the rain. The scene when the clouds did come the village began rejoicing and singing. This differs from western culture because we sometimes see rain as a bad thing instead of something that would benefit our lives.

Though this is just a small picture of the visual elements present in Lagaan, we found it helpful and interesting to look at and analyze these different visual tropes.

-Kahle and Kristin