DVD details for for
Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001)

Michel Hafner (25 January 2002):
The DVD of Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) is to the best of my knowledge the first DVD of a Bollywood film that has been released on a high quality Western label. Bollywood films are commercial films in Hindi from Bombay, the Hollywood of the film industry of India, the largest in the world concerning the number of feature films produced.
This has to be seen in a larger context. Bollywood films (as opposed to Indian art house films which do get some international distribution) have been until recently strictly a niche product for Indians at home and abroad plus people from some Asian countries and the middle east. They were pretty much unaccessible to large parts of the world and did simply not exist for a general Western audience and cinéphiles alike. Western film magazines and newspapers did not review them, film dictionaries did not cover the principal people and Western TV stations aired no films. Exceptions like 'Raj Kapoor' 's Awaara (1951) which was a hit in the former Soviet Union just confirmed the rule. What was known, if anything at all, was the cliché that Bollywood films are incredibly corny and unrealistic musicals with women singing with screeching voices in such a manner that only masochists could possibly watch/listen to this for more than some minutes.
Well, every cliché is to some extent based in reality, but to be fair it must be said that Bollywood films like any other kind of films come in different qualities/flavours aiming at different core audiences and offer different options for different tastes. And as with opera or classical music in general you may have to put in some work to appreciate a genre that is for many non Indians definitely an acquired taste. And as with films made in Hollywood or elsewhere trends come and go and the genre evolves, taking in ideas from the rest of the world and providing inspiration to the rest of the world (for example Moulin Rouge! (2001) is largely inspired by Bollywood, kind of a high tech Bollywood film on speed).
What has changed lately is the accessability of Bollywood films on the potentially high quality consumer format DVD and a rise in general interest in Bollywood beyond its traditional core audience. More Western multiplexes are showing Bollywood films on one screen. Box office revenus outside of India are growing steadily, so are the number of prints released for big films. Films enter Western top ten charts and get reviewed. The general globalisation and the prospect of considerable money inflow from non resident Indians and non Indians influence the story lines and the technical aspects of the films which get to some extent westernised and 'Hollywoodised'. The technical quality is rising (cinematography, sound effects, sfx etc.). At the same time the films keep their core trade mark, the inclusion of colorful singing and dancing numbers in ANY kind of story, which makes them quite unique in the global film market place where musicals have been officially dead for decades and practically every attempt to reanimate the genre has failed till last year's Moulin Rouge!
The top Bollywood actors and the top films have much to offer to a world market and this becomes more and more evident as the films get more and more accessible to anyone who's potentially interested.
The Indian DVD market is quite unique. It's dominated by a handful of legal companies and a bunch of nameless pirates. Films are usually released on DVD within days of the theatrical release. Sometimes pirates are available before the film hits theaters. Technical DVD quality is on average poor, often exceedingly poor. Most Indian DVDs are junk DVDs on VHS tape niveau or even below. Pretty much unwatchable for an audience used to Western quality standards. Quality awareness among the labels and the average Indian customers is low to non existent. The willingness to pay for quality and reject low quality and illegal product is weak. Piracy, consumer immaturity and the rip-off mentality of the labels form a vicious circle that produces an endless string of mediocre to awful DVDs, much to the detriment of the films and its consumers alike. Indian directors and producers don't seem to care at all what happens with their films once the rights are sold. Where Hollywood was before the introduction of TV concerning the value of films India still largely is today. So far so bad.
Fortunately there are one or two labels that do care to some extent and do try to offer a decent product, with varying success, but nonetheless. Quality leader for some years has been Digital Entertainment Inc., a label that released in early 2000 the first dual layer discs with anamorphic widescreen and correct aspect ratio, plus English subtitles and 5.1 DD sound (see Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai (2000), Fiza (2000) etc.). With Columbia/Tristar entering the picture a new jump in quality looks feasible.
They picked one of the best Bollywood films of 2001 for their Indian debut, India's official entry for the oscar for best foreign language film of 2001, Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001). So how does this film look, especially compared to other Indian DVDs? Quantum leap?
The film master used is in pretty good shape for an Indian film (Indian lab work and film masters are mostly considerably worse than Hollywood standards require), but can't compare with the (almost) mint quality of a master film element of a new Hollywood film. There are quite some speckles around and other little blemishes, and occasionally stubborn scratches are visible for several seconds. Film steadiness is ok.
Color and contrast rendition are very good. The DVD looks like the film looked in theaters. Cinematography is mostly high quality and many a scene is a feast for the eye.
Image sharpness is fair and certainly below average for Columbia/Tristar DVDs. There are two main reasons. The film and some deleted footage in the supplements are 240 minutes long. All of this is squeezed onto two layers resulting in an average bit rate about 4 Mbit/s. Such a bit rate can not support very sharp images. Consequently the transfer has been low pass filtered to remove the highest frequencies and reduce sharpness somewhat. In addition there is too much film grain and noise for this bit rate, so the transfer has been digitally noise reduced. That reduces sharpness even more.
Concerning video artifacts we have a layer of minor noise reduction artifacts due to the noise processing, there is edge enhancement visible on many occasions (the usual haloes around edges) and we have quite some aliasing and moiré in textures and objects with straight lines (such as the roof on the main building during the cricket match). The latter is rather unusual for a Columbia/Tristar DVD and makes me wonder if the usual HD transfer was made for this film or not.
Compression is certainly good for the bit budget available, but you can not compress "Lagaan" at high quality with 4 Mbit/s average. Compression artifacts are visible most of the time. Fast pans show some blocking. There's a veil of compression noise over most shots. The decision to save money and not give the film the treatment other films of this length got (Cleopatra (1963), Lawrence of Arabia (1962)) takes quite a toll here. What's needed is a superbit edition of this film with double the bit rate and a DTS track on 4 layers.
The DD 5.1 track is very good, though. The best track I have heard from any Indian DVD so far. It features deep bass effects a couple of times.
Finally Columbia/Tristar committed a grave sin in their menu design. It's obvious they have not done any Bollywood DVD before. EVERY Bollywood DVD MUST have a separate song menu! It's a need to have. Even the trashiest pirate DVD does not dare to leave it out! :-) The songs are the highlights of most Bollywood films and easy access is needed, since the songs are watched many more times than the whole film. There are whole DVDs released with nothing but song compilations! The chapters on this DVD do not coincide with the start of songs, but usually the song comes not too long after a chapter mark. If you write your own list of the chapter-song-relationship it helps. But ideal it ain't.
Overall this Indian debut DVD of Columbia/Tristar is a mixed bag. For Columbia/Tristar it's a below average effort, hampered by a low bit rate and filtering issues. The problems are easily visible on larger screens. But nonetheless this is a good looking DVD that will most certainly please on any kind of display. The shortcomings are not crass and when watched on smaller screens from several screen heights away the result is more than satisfactory. The sound is first rate and the overall effect of many scenes, especially the dance numbers is gorgeous, a feast for the eye and ears. While the DVD is neither reference quality nor excellent it's among the 10 best Indian DVDs on the market and it's sure to make an impression, whether you are familiar with Bollywood films or not. This is a very good DVD to start a Bollywood collection and get familiar with the genre. Highly recommended! Don't miss it!