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    Home»Movies»Movies by Decade»Movies - 1980s
    Movies - 1980s Movies - G 3 Mins Read

    Gandhi (1982)

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    Richard Attenborough’s powerful account of the saintly Indian leader picked up eight Oscars and drew breathless praise from critics, partly for Ben Kingsley’s quietly charismatic and thoughtful portrayal of the Mahatma (Kingsley is actually half-Indian – his birth name was Krishna Bhanji – and is from the same village where Gandhi was born), and partly for Attenborough’s painstaking yet grand direction.

    It is a film that combines eye-popping spectacle and idealism to distil the essence of a complex figure from a less chaotic and more sober era while remaining relevant to the concerns of today.

    The story begins in January 1948, in New Delhi, when an assassin’s bullet ends the life of a man who changed the course of world history. The movie then works its way back to 1893, when Mohandas Gandhi was a young, British-trained attorney sent to South Africa to defend Indian immigrants against tyranny and injustice under England’s domination.

    Without seeking conflict or inviting trouble, he began his odyssey for human rights by seeking equality for Hindus with the philosophy, “Even if you are a minority of one, truth is truth.”

    Fined, imprisoned, harassed and beaten, Gandhi was physically and financially humiliated, but no one could destroy his dignity or self-respect. “They can have my dead body but not my obedience”, he declared, and millions took notice.

    gandhi_025

    Back in Bombay in 1915, he began to dedicate his life to one goal – uniting all of India, with its filthy, illiterate, overpopulated, sprawling, primitive, poverty-stricken chaos – and giving each person a sense of national pride.

    Miraculously, he became the first Indian in two hundred years to gain concessions from the British, and eventually, through peaceful, non-violent refusal to cooperate with the rulers, he forced them to grant India independence and freedom.

    Stopping revolutions through fasting almost to the point of death, then getting arrested all over again by the very British demagogues he had protected from bloodshed, he remained undaunted.

    If this movie seems now to lack the flair of, say, Schindler’s List (1993) or Michael Collins (1996), it’s probably fair to say that it influenced both.

    Ben Kingsley dedicated himself to the role, shedding weight, taking up yoga, learning to spin cotton, and making a brave attempt to live life by Gandhi’s example.

    Over 300,000 extras appeared in the movie’s funeral scene. For this scene, 11 camera crews shot 20,000 feet of film (more than the total footage of the completed film). The edited funeral scene ran for only 125 seconds of screen time.

    The story that Richard Attenborough demanded a second take on the funeral scene with the words “Once more poppets, with a little more grief”, is unfortunately false.

    Mahatma Gandhi
    Ben Kingsley
    Margaret Bourke-White

    Candice Bergen
    General Dyer

    Edward Fox
    Lord Irwin

    John Gielgud
    Judge Broomfield

    Trevor Howard
    Lord Chelmsford

    John Mills
    Walker

    Martin Sheen
    Charlie Andrews

    Ian Charleson
    General Smuts

    Anthol Fugard
    Herman Kallenbach

    Günther Maria Halmer
    Sardar Patel

    Saeed Jaffrey
    Mirabehn

    Geraldine James
    Kahn

    Amrish Puri
    Advocate General

    John Clements
    Collins

    Richard Griffiths
    Kinnoch

    Nigel Hawthorne
    Sir George Hodge

    Michael Hordern
    Nahari

    Om Puri

    Director
    Richard Attenborough

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