Gandhi

Rating

Director

Richard Attenborough

Screenplay

John Briley

Length

188 min.

Starring

Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Martin Sheen, Ian Charleson, Athol Fugard, Gunter Maria Halmer, Saeed Jaffrey, Geraldine James, Alyque Padamsee, Amrish Puri, Roshen Seth, Rohini Hattangady, Ian Bannen

MPAA Rating

PG

Review

One of history’s greatest proponents of peaceful resistance receives the big screen treatment in Richard Attenborough’s epic Gandhi.

War is such a bloody affair and we’ve seen what wars, both beneficial and detrimental, can do to our culture and the lives of the people caught in between. As the 19th century became the 20th, an Indian lawyer who received his certification from Great Britain, begins a move for independence through use of peaceful.

Played convincingly by Ben Kingsley, Mohandas K. Gandhi is ejected from a train for refusing to give up a seat for which he had already paid, to a white passenger. Forbidden from riding in first class cars at the time, Gandhi’s Indian heritage and foul treatment lead him on a long push to abolish the segregation of the Muslim and Hindustani people within South Africa.

He never lifts a hand, preferring to apply the biblical adage about turning the other cheek. It’s his force of personality and devotion to God that help him concur the British at first in South Africa and finally in India. When he finally achieves his goal in India, we know that it cannot last long. He is increasing in age and it won’t be long for the tenuous peace between Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan flares into the Civil War that we historically know took place.

Twelve years after the universally disliked figure at the head of the film Patton, another historical figure, this one almost universally liked, triumphed at the Academy Awards. Gandhi is a powerful picture about the beliefs of a man who brought real change to South Africa and India. It suffers just as Patton did before it.

The film drags on for about three hours. We are well aware by the end of the film how Gandhi’s hunger strikes and pledges for nonviolent protest impacted the people around him and got him the attention he needed from the press and from the people. Any who opposed him looked like tyrants and despots hell bent on oppressing his people. He was a modern Moses for the Indian people. However, the repetitive nature of the story and the events depicted keep the audience from involving themselves emotionally. His death is tragic, but by the time we get to it, so much has occurred that we feel physically drained by the whole experience and can’t seem to shed an honest tear.

There are many characters in the film, but none feel as important as the man himself. Not his wife, not the journalists who spend large amounts of time covering his life, not anyone. The film is filled with many new and up-and-coming talents. Candice Bergen plays legendary journalist Margaret Bourke-White and Martin Sheen gives his time as journo Vince Walker. However, they all pale at Kingsley’s side and feel more like footnotes than character.

Gandhi is a big screen history book. It’s the kind of pic that fits perfectly in any high school classroom and is an intriguing document of a real life. However, it’s not the kind of movie one can sit down and watch repeatedly. It stands alongside Patton as one of the satisfying and perfunctory Best Picture choices Oscar has made in its long love affair with biographies.

Review Written

December 19, 2006