_LeoTheMaster's Talk

Gandhi

Richard Attenborough's film focuses on the powerful convictions of the lawyer who led the nonviolent revolt against the British in the years following Wordl War 1. The biopic is a sweeping account of the life and times of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the saintly, pacifist father of modern India.

The film opens at the funeral of Gandhi, followed by his life in chronological backflashes, focusing on the passive resistance that became the trademark of his struggle for independence from Britain.

The three-plus-hour epic is indeed faithful to the historical records of Gandhi's achievements and his revolutionary adherence to nonviolence as a powerful political weapon. At the same time, Attenborough almost avoids the heart of the man, choosing to beatify Gandhi instead. In this movie, Gandhi is the Mahatma--the "Great Soul"--but never Gandhi the Man.

At the center of the film is Ben Kingsley's riveting performance as Gandi. Kingsley is an Anglo-Indian, born Krishna Banji in 1944 in England. The film took him to India for the first time, yet he ensured that he gave his performance an extra dimension by immersing himself in Gandhi's way of life, like sitting cross-legged on a mat, following his diet and practising yoga.

The flick was created before the era of computer-generated images, yet the film's brilliantly directed and photographed, movingly told, and convincingly performed by an exceptional cast.

Shot mostly on location in India, it features thousand of real extras with lavish details. With Gandi, Attenborough proved that epics on the scale of Ben Hur were still possible in the eighties, and that historical epics would always have a place in cinema.

In the film, however, Gandhi's assassination seems to come out of the blue--we're not told that there was a bombing attempt on his life just a few weeks earlier.

Reading between the lines, it's apparent that Gandi's religious openness wasn't anything that most Hindus or Muslims were interested in sharing. Not even his devotion to the cause of India's "untouchables."

Gandhi became a hero to the people of India not because of his elevated spirituality or his enlightened pacifism. They loved him because he took no notice from the British by defying their Anglo-Saxons' rules, and the Indian population bought into his nonviolence program because it worked!

The sad reality is that on the same day that Britain granted India independence, the country was split in two. Jinnah's dream of a Muslim state, Pakistan, was fulfilled.

Attenborough, who'd struggled to make this biopic film for 20 years, sought to resurrect the man for a modern generation. The resulting film won nine Oscars, including Bes Picture, Best Director and Best Actor.