Time sees what the Academy missed in Lagaan

10 years after Bhuvan and his band of merry men from Champaner took the cinematic world by storm, getting tantalizingly close to the Oscar but losing out in the last stage, another American powerhouse; the Time magazine has named Lagaan among the top 25 movies on sports in the world.

The Oscar nominated movie tell the story of a bunch of villagers in the British colony of India who get challenged to a game of cricket by the local administrator. The administration promises to forego the taxes of the drought stricken village if the local team wins, which they do with the help of a British coach. The film is an allegory for how the public sentiment against the British rule in India crystallized and finally broke into a full fledged struggle.

The Time magazine commented on the movie, saying, "From the thunderclap in the first torrential rainstorm — a cue for riotous dancing — to the climactic sunlight on the smiling faces of millions of viewers, this Bollywood epic is cause for joy of meteorological proportions. Surely the longest and most enthralling underdog-sports movie ever, Lagaan stars Aamir Khan (who also produced the film) as the leader of 19th century peasants from the western Indian town of Champaner, who strike a desperate deal with the representatives of the English Raj: if the locals defeat the lords of the British Empire in a cricket match, they get a break on their lagaan, or land tax. One guess as to whether the Champaneris become champs.

"The most recent of only three musical dramas in India's glorious film history to be nominated for an Academy Award (after the 1957 Mother India and the 1988 Salaam Bombay!), and one of the few to achieve US release outside of the Desi theatre circuit, Lagaan has the capability to win over Bollywood newcomers — to turn snickers into smiles, indulgence to rapture. Writer-director Ashutosh Gowariker finds the spice in a masala mix of melodrama and character comedy, and keeps his cinematic rhythms humid and urgent for the full 3¾-hour running time. Even those who know none of cricket's complicated rules will bounce in their seats to AR Rahman's irrepressible tunes; here, one can immediately and fully accept the Bollywood trope of music and dance as an expression of life's deepest, most soaring emotions.

As sports film, social document or communal ecstasy, Lagaan is the all-time all-rounder."

17th on the list which has been compiled according alphabetical precedence, this is an honour indeed. It also is a break from the much speculated possibility that movies that show the true resurgence of India are ignore by the West.