Gandhi

Gandhi is one of those rare historical films where accuracy was of great importance to the writer and director. There is a tendency when making a biographical drama such as this to deify the person of focus, and indeed during the early stages of development for this picture that is exactly what studios were pushing for. But Richard Attenborough, who had been trying to bring this to the screen since the 1960s, wanted to show that Gandhi was a man, much like everyone else. That despite the great things he accomplished in his life he had faults, made mistakes, loved his wife, and was just as human as we all are. By doing so, it allows his film, which is dense with politics and historical events, an opportunity to breathe as we get moments where Gandhi (Ben Kingsley) butts heads with his wife, Kasturba (Rohini Hattangadi), but ultimately shows her just how much he loves and respects her. 

If you didn’t already know what happened to Gandhi in the end, the film will quickly get you up to speed. The opening shot is Mahatma Gandhi on January 30, 1948, being shot three times in the chest by a Hindu nationalist, Nathuram Godse. This scene will overshadow the rest of the picture as we spend the next three hours seeing how things got to that point in history. This is a shocking and pointless act of violence but it mirrors the countless other pointless acts of violence that had happened to the Indian people by first the South African government, then the British, and then during the civil war between the Hindu and the Muslim. Gandhi spent much of his adult life trying to free his people and establish peace but was always met with violence.

After this opening scene, we flash back to a much younger Gandhi who has recently relocated to South Africa in 1893. He is a young lawyer who appears to be ignorant of the politics and emotional state of the people in this area at this time, as, despite possessing a valid first-class ticket, he is being told his kind are not allowed to be in first class. When he resists, he is thrown from the train at the next stop. Dada Abdullah (Amrish Puri), president of the Natal Indian Congress, invites him to a demonstration against the South African Government, where he burns his pass, a document all Indian citizens must have on them. This demonstration results in a severe beating from the local law. The government then attempts to enact a law requiring all Indians to be fingerprinted, treating them as if they were all criminals. 

Gandhi responds to this with a series of peaceful demonstrations that eventually result in his arrest. Upon his release, he relocates back to India, where his methods of passive resistance inspire the native Indians to demonstrate against their British rulers. While the Indians remain peaceful, the British do not, and massacres begin to happen. Eventually, though, news is getting out to the world of the culpability of the British in these massacres, and the British troops back out, leaving the Indians to rule themselves. But this brings a division amongst the two main religions. Muslim and Hindu begin to fight amongst themselves, dividing the land into India and Pakistan, and a civil war breaks out. This leaves Gandhi distraught, and he begins a fast, refusing to eat until both sides lay down their weapons and promise to stop fighting amongst themselves. 

It doesn’t take a scholar of Indian history to follow the complex politics of what is going on during the course of this film. Richard Attenborough does an excellent job of making sure we are always able to keep up with it. He also makes sure that while there are certainly vilified English soldiers, they are not all heartless murderers. One judge, in particular, who has to uphold the law and put Gandhi in prison, makes it perfectly clear while sentencing him that he envisions, and looks forward to, the very near future when the rule will change and Gandhi will be freed again. We see other Anglican men and women who are very much on Gandhi’s side throughout the course of the story, including several reporters who make sure his story is being told to the world. 

Sir Ben Kingsley was a virtual nobody at the time he was cast in the title role. He had done stage work and had a bit role in a film years before, but he would not have been known to movie audiences in 1982. His father was a native Indian from the same area that Gandhi was from, while his mother was English. His skin was darkened for the role of Gandhi, which has been looked down upon in more recent years, but this is a far cry from Mickey Rooney in yellowface. This is more akin to Bradley Cooper donning a prosthetic nose to play Leonard Bernstein or Gary Oldman in a fat suit for Winston Churchill. He’s not playing a race he wasn’t; he’s using makeup to better appear the way the real person actually did. 

And what a transition it was, too. When Kingsley first showed up on the scene in his full Gandhi makeup and wardrobe, many people were convinced that the real Gandhi had come back to them. Kingsley looked, sounded, and acted like the real thing, and it unnerved some of the natives at the time, many of whom had personally known Gandhi. This is a true transitional performance and one that Kingsley, no matter how good he is in other films, can never live up to again. He has been amazing in other films such as Schindler’s List and Hugo, but Gandhi is his magnum opus, netting him his first Academy Award. 

Even more impressive than Kingsley is the production. This was a massive undertaking, one that most of the studios refused to back, fearing there wouldn’t be enough of an audience to justify the production costs. Columbia Pictures eventually took a gamble on it, and while it wasn’t the highest-grossing picture of the year, it still made almost six times its budget, well more than it was initially predicted. It’s a gorgeous-looking film, too, capturing the unique beauty of India and South Africa. It was filmed on location, and the beautiful architecture and the people of India gave audiences a glimpse into a country and peoples that most of them had never seen before. It even launched a short period in filmmaking where the exotic locale of India became a popular setting, including, just a short time later, the James Bond film Octopussy. 

There is always a danger, in films such as this, to try to tell too much of the story. Attenborough would fall into that very trap a decade later with Chaplin. But even though Gandhi covers a long period of time, it never feels truncated or overstuffed. This is a three-hour-plus film, but it never feels its length, either. It also never feels like it is rushing through major events in order to cram it all in. Instead, it gets across the main events as perfectly as possible, takes its time to make sure we fully understand the whys and appreciate the sacrifices made by the people, and also takes just a bit of time to make sure we never lose track of the humanity of the principal players, specifically Gandhi himself and his wife. So much hinges on us liking him as a person, whether we know the history or not, and this film delivers on that level so that whether we had previous opinions or knowledge on the British rule of India or not, we care while watching this film. That is a tremendous achievement for a film that could have overwhelmed us with the details and the history. This film, on the surface, can seem like homework, the kind of thing you would only watch inside a classroom, but it is so much better than that. It deserves to be seen and on the biggest screen you can find.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Richard Attenborough (won)

Best Director: Richard Attenborough (won)

Best Actor: Ben Kingsley (won)

Best Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen: John Briley (won)

Best Art Direction: Stuart Craig, Robert W. Laing, and Michael Seirton (won)

Best Cinematography: Billy Williams and Ronnie Taylor (won)

Best Costume Design: John Mollo and Bhanu Athaiya (won)

Best Film Editing: John Bloom (won)

Best Makeup: Tom Smith

Best Original Score: Ravi Shankar and George Fenton

Best Sound: Gerry Humphreys, Robin O’Donoghue, Jonathan Bates, and Simon Kaye

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Release Date: December 3, 1982

Running Time: 191 minutes

Rated PG

Starring: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, and Martin Sheen

Directed By: Richard Attenborough