Very well executed

Such a frustrating disappointment

Excellent but underrated film

Excellent adaptation.

The biographical drama "Gandhi" was written by John Briley and directed by Richard Attenborough. It was released in 1982 and received 8 Academy Awards and Golden Globes for Best Director and Best Foreign Film in the following year. Richard Attenborough had attempted to get the project made for 18 years which demonstrates how much determination and passion were spent during the making of the film. Ben Kingsley, a British actor who, portrays Mohandas Gandhi in the film also received an Academy Award for Best Actor. The 74 year old is also well known for his performances in the films Schindler's List (1993), Shutter Island (2010), Iron Man 3 (2013) and many more. The film is about Mohandas Karamchad Gandhi's life as the leader of the Indian non-violent independence movement against the British rule in the 20th century. It begins with Gandhi's assassination on 30th January 1948, when he was shot three times by a Hindu fanatic named Nathuram Godse (Harsh Nayyar). The film goes on with a defining moment in Gandhi's life, when he is thrown off a train to Pretoria, South Africa in 1893 because of racial injustice. This particular moment convinces Gandhi to fight for equal rights for Indians first in South Africa, later in India.The film also shows Gandhi's salt march and other projects. The actors in the film were appropriately cast, because the film's production was a British-Indian cooperation and there are British and Indian actors. Ben Kingsley was a good choice as the protagonist because of his Indian heritage and great acting skills. Most of the acting is well done, especially Ben Kingsley let everyone truly imagine what the real Mohandas Gandhi was like. The viewer can see what life was like in India in the 20th century and what Gandhi, his family and his huge community was like. Ben Kingsley plays Gandhi very convincingly throughout the whole movie. The use of camera is very good because it was filmed from different angles. These angles are switching a lot to illustrate the different point of views, for example almost at the end of the movie, when Gandhi is really weak from his fast and everyone is standing around his bed, we can see all the visitors from Gandhi's perspective. This technical element creates a very diversified perspective which in my opinion is well done. The lighting contributes, like the sound to the setting and atmosphere of the film and increases the intended effect of the film. This can be seen during the different phases of Gandhi's life. At the beginning of the film, when there are only a few followers of his independence movement, these followers shout approvingly but hesitantly at him during his speeches. Later, the crowds get bigger and bigger and the people begin to shout "Long life Gandhi-j!". In contrast to these scenes, Gandhi's growing unpopularity can be seen rather at the end of the film when the crowd screams "Death to Gandhi!". I think this use of sound and also of special effects is rather interesting because it demonstrates how the masses saw Gandhi throughout his life. At the end of the film, which shows Gandhi's death from a different perspective, it can be seen how Hindu fanatics are willing to kill Gandhi because they think he is too friendly with Muslims and Christians. All in all, I think "Gandhi" is a good film because it lets the viewer get a look inside Gandhi's life and it shows his whole personality including his fears and dreams for himself, but more importantly for India. In my opinion, his family especially his children could have appeared more frequently because they are a part of his life, even though they don't seem to play a big role. Their relationship could have been touched a bit more, since it would have been interesting to see him as a father. Of course, he is or appears to be the father of India and especially India's independence but in this film it seems like he is almost a stranger to his own children. Even if that is true, this relationship would have been a significant and very interesting addition to the film which I would have really liked to see. Despite these critical remarks, I consider the film a successful one and recommend watching the film because the viewer gets an idea of Gandhi's lifestyle and personality, including his fight for equality, his philosophy of non-violent protest and his wish to see the world at peace.

The 1982 movie "Gandhi" written by John Briley and produced and directed by Richard Attenborough, tells the story of Gandhi's life and shows the viewer his opinion on the Indian society. It is not possible to summarize the life of a so important man like Gandhi in just one three-hour movie but the producers did a good job. The movie begins with Gandhi's assassination and I really like this idea because you first get interested in how it came to this and you witness the assassination from the perspective of the murderer. Another very powerful scene is when Gandhi burns passes, what is against the law. He gets beaten over and over again, but he still continues. This action shows a very important character trait of Gandhi. He does not fight against the police, which describes Gandhi's way of protest very well. In addition to that the scene where Gandhis followers get beaten by the soldiers is very impressive because they accepted the beating and still stood to Gandhi and his morals. Gandhi had very close relation to his family, which is impressively shown when his wife died. I like it that Gandhi also is emotional and not arrogant. The most important facts about Gandhis life are well-performed but of course some things are made very simplistic because Gandhis life was full of important events. All in all I would say that the authors did a good job because it is very difficult to produce a such an authentic and impressive biography.

Don't fear the 191 minute running time in this masterful epic that explains in a forward that documenting a year in someone's life like Gandhi is difficult enough, let alone a lifetime. The film starts at the end, with his assassination, where Ghandi simply exclaims "Oh no!" as he collapses. Going back more than 50 years, the young Gandhi is explaining his desires for peaceful protests which seem impossible in any era, yet HW persists. Multiple beatings, arrests, court appearances and public speeches keeps that ideal working, making this a lesson in how a huge nation under the control of another got its independence in ways clever, subtly manipulative, often tragic, yet ultimately triumphant.This 191 minute epic then does indeed fly by, featuring one of the greatest screen portrayals of one of the greatest men ever. Ben Kingsley may not be a star, but his performance here gave him household name status, and years later, Steven Spielberg cast Kingsley as a Jewish man working with a non Jewish man to keep Jews out of the concentration camps, it was a reminder of how subtlety in acting creates a great portrayal that doesn't seem like acting at all. Kingsley is transformed into one of the great heroes of the 20th Century and not only looks like Gandhi for over 50 years of his life but makes you believe that he is Gandhi.Under the incredible direction of Sir Richard Attenborough, this historical epic is brought to life. An all-star cast supports him, but many of the actors are only on for a few moments. The script shows that not all the British people in India were rotten, that a few came to the cause because they changed, some didn't have to because they believed in complete equality, and some were downright brutal. This also shows how Indian women were as involved in the fight as men were; in fact, his wife stands up to him in ways that would cause other men instantly kill or beat them. But not the gentle, peace loving Fandi, shown to have minor flaws but with fairness and dignity.I first fell in love with the Indian countryside in "A Passage to India", and unfortunately feared that 191 running time in spite of the praise and awards heaped upon it. Unknowns outside of John Gielgud, Martin Sheen and Candice Bergen could have cast in their stead, and the film would remain as potent. But bravo to the casting of Ben Kingsley, because it would take somebody of enormous charisma to play Ghandi and make me not think of him. This is absolutely spectacular.

As a film lover, I have recently gotten suspicious of biopics and historical films. These kinds of movies tend to sugarcoat the truth to present almost typical Hollywood stories, for instance, making some people who weren't all that bad, the main villains, simply so the audiences can identify an antagonist (The Aviator is a big offender in this category). Gandhi (1982) falls into many of the these traps that other biopics fall into and as a result, becomes an over- glorification, a complete lie, and something that almost doesn't resemble a story, but merely a collage of events.The film basically presents us with the major events of Gandhi's career: his time working against British oppression of Indians as a lawyer in South Africa, the Amritsar massacre, the March of Salt, Gandhi's assassination, etc. The events are simply presented, very accurately from what I read about them, but the film leaves out many things about him that weren't very noble. Reading about events in Gandhi's life from all different sources, like books and online articles, I can safely say that I am appalled by some of the things that this man has done.When fighting British oppression of Indians in South Africa, he basically ignored native South Africans that have lived in the country much longer than any Indian or British person. Second, he was cruel to his family, so much so that his son spoke out against him and later died as a drunk; he even negatively compared his own wife to a cow. Additionally, when his wife was sick, he refused to give her British medicine and yet was willing to take it himself when he had malaria. After Hitler came to power and WWII started, he wrote to Hitler, addressing him as a friend, and after the war was over, he himself said that many of the Jews from the Holocaust should have let themselves die and submit to the oppression of the Nazis. Any sensible man or woman would know that this is could be nothing more than an insane and horrible suggestion and that it would be simply impossible to deal with the Nazis using Gandhi's ideas. This was the Gandhi that so many people idolized? I even read an article from The Guardian saying that a biography about Gandhi was forbidden for publication because it revealed too many things about his life.Other than the fact that the film is lying to everyone who sees it, the film is just too preachy. It doesn't barrage you with moral lessons every second of screen time, but half of the dialogue is moral lessons and guidelines on life and doesn't feel very natural. Even in the beginning, when it shows Gandhi's funeral, an announcer covering the funeral outright tells the audience (indirectly) what to think of Gandhi and how others, like Albert Einstein viewed him, and that we should view him that way too. Richard Attenborough, the director and producer, was actually advised against glorifying Gandhi. I don't get why he didn't take that advice to heart, considering that this was a passion project to him. Even some of the British officials in the film act like two-dimensional bad guys. One of the only positive things I can say about this film is that Ben Kingsley nails it as this film's version of Gandhi. He makes me wish that the Gandhi that has been glorified by the world was a real person, instead of the flawed and sometimes frightening human being that actually existed on this Earth. The film also has a genuinely good message, but like I said, it's just turned into a preachy sermon throughout most of the movie.What else can I say? I was so disappointed to realize that so much of this man's life was left out and simplified simply to be more Hollywood-friendly and attract more crowds. That is complete BS. What a movie biopic should do, I think, is have the courage to present the uglier details of a person's life and as a result, feel more challenging. Plus, don't preach a moral lesson to us if a person lived by one, because that's being unsubtle. Let us figure it out for ourselves. Some of those things I said were applied in the excellent film, Raging Bull, by Martin Scorsese. Not only is the film mostly true to life, according to Jake LaMotta, whom the film was based on, but it wasn't afraid to portray LaMotta as a brute of a man like he was in his boxing heyday and it didn't outright tell you what to think of LaMotta or how he was thinking; instead, it kept you guessing with Robert De Niro's performance and the cinematography. Gandhi is just too afraid to turn a man who undeniably made major contributions to humanity into anything less than what people wish to see him as. As a result, this film is disgraceful and is too much of a piece of Oscar bait to be genuinely good. I'm sorry, members of the Academy, but you made a terrible choice for the Best Picture of 1982.