So after last month watching and greatly disappointing the fans of Sophie’s Choice, here I am back again in 1982 for what was probably that films’ greatest awards competitor, Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. Gandhi is of course quite a different movie to Sophie’s Choice, yet it is just as much a standard sort of Oscar bait-y film: the biographic epic. It’s easy to attach cynicism to the movie then, but it was also very much a labour of love. Attenborough had been trying to get it made for some twenty years, only for it to repeatedly be set back by numerous production and political factors. But he was finally able to bring the project to fruition thanks in large part to generous financing from the National Film Development Corporation of India.
That detail is not insignificant, and though it resulted in the movie being made and at an epic scale befitting the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi, it also obviously raises questions about conflicts of interest. Gandhi is after all arguably the most important figure in the history of modern India, a sanctified man whose leadership and philosophies are revered the world over, but no more so than in his native subcontinent. And so with the Indian government footing almost half of the bill (10 of the movies’ 22 million dollar budget), and thus also securing filming permits and locations, the onus was on Attenborough to keep the film complimentary, lest he offend his particularly powerful benefactors. Critics took note of this when the film ultimately came out, and though it didn’t receive a ton of backlash, what negative press it did receive often included this very fact. It seemed propagandistic, certainly to Richard Grenier (an awful critic it must be said) who used it and the movie as a launch point for a book denouncing Gandhi.
It’s sometimes difficult to judge such works that have either been artistically compromised or intellectually dishonest, and there are certainly plenty examples of films that have highlighted or contrived positive aspects of figures while hiding the negatives. Gandhi to a degree does do this, but at the same time it must also be considered the importance of Gandhi the idea compared to Gandhi the man. What Gandhi represents is far more vital to the film, to Attenborough, and to culture, than who he was necessarily as a person, especially in an age when his wisdom falls a lot on deaf ears. And it’s not like Gandhi was secretly a bad guy all along who didn’t believe any of his own principles. The movie may cover some things up in the preservation of Gandhi’s ideals and its’ celebratory nature, but any movie about Gandhi was always going to do that to some extent. Just as any movie about Lincoln or Joan of Arc or any of the rest of the cast of Clone High was going to do. There are avenues certainly in which to deconstruct his legacy, from writers or filmmakers who already most likely don’t like him, but THE Gandhi movie has no obligation to include comparatively minor transgressions from his life.
That said, I do think the movie suffers for not humanizing Gandhi enough. Though it shouldn’t bask in his less tasteful qualities, I wish the character was more relatable. He is often on a pedestal throughout the film, virtuous and leaderly to a fault that we don’t ever feel like we know him. He always seems apart from other people, and that’s where the sanctimoniousness hurts the movie. While Gandhi’s ideas and kindness shine through, it’s much in the way that those traits resonate in Jesus movies, without our understanding the character or why these things are important to him. The film plays the incident where 23-year old Gandhi was thrown off a train in South Africa for sitting in a first-class compartment despite having a first-class ticket as the catalyst for his subsequent ideology and resistance, when obviously there was more to it than that. The very next scene he’s complaining about it to fellow Indians and right after that he’s already begun his protest movement. I would have liked to have seen perhaps his childhood experiences or a collage of the discrimination he faced in South Africa to better build up the systemic nature of what he’s fighting against and how he emotionally dealt with such things to bring about the passion he was known for. The film, in many ways that I will get into, strives to be Lawrence of Arabia, but perhaps forgets that Lawrence is an extremely nuanced character, who though also portrayed objectively with little explicit detail, cultivates a depth of understanding with the audience. A further apt comparison would be Ava DuVernay’s Selma, in which Martin Luther King Jr. is still portrayed as the iconic hero of Civil Rights that he was, but also showcases some of his anxieties and character faults, particularly in his personal relationships.
In spite of this relative thinness to the character (in fact making it all the more unfortunate), the performance of Ben Kingsley is absolutely superb. He embodies the larger-than-life spirit as well as gravitas of the man, boasting as well a striking physical resemblance that renders him completely believable in the part. He’s earnest and intelligent and is at his best when delivering speeches or reciting philosophy. You can sense, like in Attenborough, the love he has for Gandhi, it’s apparent in every frame he’s on screen and on its own keeps the movie engaging when other elements falter. The fact that Kingsley essentially came out of nowhere is all the more impressive. Of course he went on to win the Oscar, in addition to this movies’ several others -and it’s a shame that sort of thing doesn’t happen anymore with breakout performances. Yalitza Aparacio certainly deserved it.
Kingsley is backed up by an astonishing assortment of revered talent, many of whom playing real people, that very much feels like Attenborough trying to outdo the perfect supporting ensemble of Lawrence. A trio of knighted icons of British stage make appearances in John Mills, Michael Hordern, and most notably John Gielgud. Brief Encounter’s Trevor Howard shows up as the judge of Gandhi’s sedition trial, Ian Bannen is in there too, and Attenborough’s frequent collaborator Edward Fox plays the living embodiment of why people hated the British. In addition, the movie features quite a cabal of younger talent either established or on the rise at that time, from hot American stars Candice Bergen and Martin Sheen, to a fresh off of Chariots of Fire Ian Charleson, a young Geraldine James, and then British TV staples Nigel Hawthorne, Richard Griffiths, and Bernard Hill. John Ratzenberger has a small role, as he seemed to in every big movie made in Britain in the early 80s (and quite rudely overdubbed), and in a slight but memorable confrontation scene in South Africa, Gandhi is harassed by a 24 year old Daniel Day-Lewis (as presumably his first accented character). And yet the stand-out performances apart from Kingsley are Rohini Hattangadi as Gandhi’s wife and especially Roshan Seth as his lifelong friend and first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru. In fact most of the Indian actors make an impression, from Saeed Jaffrey (as Vallabhbhai Patel), to Alyque Padamsee (as Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah), and even Amrish Puri, who alongside Seth would go on to greater recognition through sad stereotypes in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The presence of such recognizable faces and impressive new talent alike does make the movie feel legitimately big. That and of course the sheer volume of extras involved totaling 300,000 for Gandhi’s funeral procession -setting a world record the movie still holds. In light of this scale Gandhi was thought to be the last cry of the classic Hollywood epic (until David Lean’s similarly set A Passage to India two years later). And so it’s great model is the great film of that form, Lawrence of Arabia, the character journey at the heart of the story being somewhat similar. Obviously it doesn’t match up, but it’s curious to note Attenborough’s choices to somewhat mimic that earlier films’ style. There may not be the immaculate panoramic shots of landscapes, but there are more than a few similar set-pieces. Interiors of British Raj palaces and General Smuts’ headquarters in South Africa are grandiose and ornate in a way that recalls the military bases and sets of Lawrence. And the structure is very much the same, beginning at Gandhi’s death and telling his story chronologically from there, with even the intermission at a similar thematic juncture.
These things however don’t disguise the fact that it’s not as cohesive as such similar epics, a little choppy and awkward in places where it tries to fit in significant touchstones and events. The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre is depicted and well, but it doesn’t quite fit, only loosely connected to Gandhi’s story and not very directly impactful of anything that comes after. An isolated incident used to illustrate violent oppression can be useful, but here it doesn’t come off so. There’s a middle portion of the movie that isn’t all that engaging, though it ought to be, with the best stuff coming out of the first act sequestered in South Africa and the final big conflict over the Partition of India.
Still, Kingsley’s performance and the solid heart is enough to carry the movie through, and on a production level, the stuff that is impressive is incredibly so. It’s perhaps not the best Gandhi movie that could have been made, and I’ll concede a slightly less sanitized portrait of its title figure may have made it better -though the obstacles to that are more variant. I’d have liked a tighter narrative, and I’d have liked a Gandhi I could understand as well as admire, worthy of Kingsley’s terrifically dedicated impersonation. But at the end of the day, Attenborough did realize his dream project. He brought Gandhi’s story to film with all the pomp and grandeur it deserved. And in doing so, he contributed in a not insubstantial way to the spread of Gandhi’s message to the world, further cementing the immortality of perhaps history’s greatest pacifist.
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