The Film Analysis Of A Bollywood Film: Lagaan

I decided I would talk about a Bollywood movie, because I want more Bollywood movies than Hollywood movies. I picked Lagaan because I felt as though this movie portrays social class and race. This movie takes place in a small poor village of Champaner during the peak of the British Empire in India during 1893. Captain Andrew Russell, the commanding officer of the Champaner are gas imposed high taxes (the meaning for Lagaan) on the people from the local villages due to the prolonged drought. Upset, the villagers are led by a young boy named Bhuvan, who begs the Raja to help. The Raja tells them, he is bound by British law and cannot help them. While visiting the Raja, the villagers witness a cricket match. Bhuvan mocks the game and gets into a fight with one of the officers. Russell immediately dislikes Bhuvan and makes a bet with him, stating he will cancel the taxes for three years if the

Structural functionalism explains that society is a whole with different structures that contributes to the whole and that is how society functions. In Lagaan, society was supposedly unified by the British through taxes and keeping the Indians at bay from rebelling, but when Bhuvan and his team won the match against the British, the functionalistic world started to dissipate. The British ruled India started to dissipate, while the new free India started to appear and the structures for that society started to form themselves to make a solid society. Social class and race are both considered to structures in a functionalistic society; because that is one way we are seen by others. We are picked out by our social class, our race, our family status, etc. We are then pushed to see if we can work through our class and make it higher or plummet to the lowest. Functionalism shows us the nitty gritty of each society and how the structures of each society