Gandhi (1982) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / November 11, 2014

Gandhi is the 1982 epic that aimed to faithfully retell the live and times of (who else) Gandhi. For me, this film symbolizes both the spectacular grandeur of Hollywood and that a big budget doesn’t necessarily equal a truly great film.

Ben Kingsley is undeniably fantastic in his portrayal of Gandhi

            The film starts off dramatically with Gandhi’s murder after which it flashes back to earlier portions of his life, including the scene that the film presents as the life-changing event of Gandhi’s life: being thrown out of a train in South Africa for being an Indian despite possessing a first-class ticket. This spurs him into action, resulting in him launching a nonviolent protest campaign for Indian rights in South Africa. The campaign is partly successful and Gandhi returns to India where he is urged to aid in securing India’s independence from the British Empire as well. The film also chronicles the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, India’s eventual independence, its religious division and outbursts of violence between Muslims and Hindus, Gandhi’s hunger strike, the Partition of India and Gandhi’s eventual murder.

            That’s a lot of ground to cover and it’s one of the reasons the film didn't have as much impact as I think it should have. The film tends to feel like a greatest hits version of Gandhi’s life and it loses steam well before it crosses the finish line. Like I said, it’s brought to life with all the power a Hollywood epic can muster. The acting is great all around, with Ben Kingsley providing a historic performance on par with George C. Scott’s turn as Patton; the cinematography is impressive, particularly during Gandhi’s funeral with several hundred thousand extras actually present (no CGI nonsense), etc. But for lack of a better word, it gets pretty boring. 

To get back to the film feeling like Gandhi’s greatest hits, at least the filmmakers were thankfully aware of the impossibility of a ‘perfect’ film adaptation of Gandhi’s life as seen in the opening statement: “No man's life can be encompassed in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allotted weight, to include each event, each person who helped to shape a lifetime. What can be done is to be faithful in spirit to the record and to try to find one's way to the heart of the man...” So Attenborough and co. obviously dismissed the idea of a complete and perfect adaptation and instead chose to focus on remaining true to the spirit of Gandhi. This is all fine and well, especially considering the fact that many successful historical films have always been accused of revisionism in some way, but I have doubts to whether or not they succeeded. It's Kingsley’s performance by far that comes closest to instilling Gandhi’s spirit in the viewer, but I don’t think the film itself rises above being a mere ‘film version’ of Gandhi’s life that impresses on scale alone. Yes, we experience the major events in his life in a visually impressive manner, but we don’t really get inside his head, I feel. The one scene that tries to explain how he became 'Gandhi' is the scene where he’s thrown off the train, but it all feels thin. And that’s my problem with the film in a nutshell: despite its epic nature (and all the care and passion that undeniably went into it), the film tends to feel thin. The film focuses mostly on Gandhi being Gandhi rather than really digging into how Gandhi became ‘Gandhi’.

Stray observation:

Why does the film start with showing Gandhi’s murder and end with pretty much the same scene, but with a cut to black when Gandhi is shot, as if implying it’s too harrowing to show even though you showed it at the beginning?