Reel Classics: Gandhi

Today’s Reel Classic looks at a film released in 1982 high­light­ing the life (and death) of an icon­ic fig­ure and social activist, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (aka Mahatma Gandhi).  It fol­lows his sto­ry from 1893 as an attor­ney in South Africa through his efforts to work for the inde­pen­dence of India from the rule of the British Empire and his assas­si­na­tion in 1948.  It out­lines his efforts to free India uti­liz­ing non-vio­lence as his means of cre­at­ing change. His strate­gies were uti­lized by anoth­er great change agent in our coun­try dur­ing the strug­gle for civ­il rights — Martin Luther King. 

Gandhi and King are my two most respect­ed heroes; both demon­strat­ed the pow­er of non-vio­lence as a tool for pos­i­tive change.

Richard Attenborough was the direc­tor of the film and was first approached with the con­cept of mak­ing a film about Gandhi in 1962.  Reportedly he was approached by an Indian civ­il ser­vant work­ing in London who was a devot­ed fol­low­er of Gandhi.  After speak­ing with the indi­vid­ual, he read the biog­ra­phy of Gandhi by Louis Fischer and agreed that Gandhi’s efforts would make a fine film.  However, it would take anoth­er twen­ty years to see the con­cept come to fruition.

We meet the young Gandhi as an attor­ney in South Africa who finds him­self thrown off a train because he is rid­ing in first class.  Neither Indians nor Africans are per­mit­ted in the whites-only cars. The inci­dent leads Gandhi to ini­ti­ate a non-vio­lent protest advo­cat­ing for the rights of Indians in South Africa. Eventually the efforts lead to the gov­ern­ment rec­og­niz­ing rights for Indians (but not for native Africans). 

Gandhi returns to India and is acclaimed for his efforts in South Africa.  He is urged by many in India to take up the cause of inde­pen­dence from British rule, and he agrees to lead the effort.  He mounts a non-vio­lent protest that brought mil­lions of Indians into the move­ment.  The efforts saw vio­lence against the pro­test­ers where many non-vio­lent par­tic­i­pants were gunned down by British mil­i­tary.  We also see the impris­on­ment of Gandhi for his efforts in lead­ing this cause. 

However, Gandhi per­sists in advo­cat­ing non-vio­lence as the means for change.  A quote from Gandhi regard­ing the strat­e­gy: “The func­tion of a civ­il resis­tance is to pro­voke response and we will con­tin­ue to pro­voke until they respond or change the law. They are not in con­trol, we are.”    Another quote: “An eye for an eye ends up mak­ing the whole world blind.”

Through terms in prison and hunger strikes, Gandhi per­sist­ed in his efforts to free India and to pur­sue the non-vio­lent path in doing so. He brought world-wide atten­tion to his cause and to his beliefs.  In 1947 Great Britain relent­ed and grant­ed inde­pen­dence to India.  There were tremen­dous cel­e­bra­tions through­out the coun­try, but their trou­bles were far from over.  There were major ten­sions between Hindus and Muslims, lead­ing to vio­lence.  Gandhi con­tin­ued to advo­cate for non-vio­lence and accep­tance of oth­ers.  He worked to dimin­ish the divi­sive impact of reli­gious dif­fer­ences.  Another quote from Gandhi: “I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.”

Unfortunately, the coun­try was split and the north­west part of India which was pri­mar­i­ly Muslim became a new coun­try, Pakistan. Gandhi was opposed to the split­ting of the coun­try and in turn angered both Muslims and Hindus.  His life of seek­ing peace and uni­ty by means of non-vio­lent protests came to an end in 1948 when he was assas­si­nat­ed by an angry Hindu protester.

For the role of Gandhi, sev­er­al well-known actors were con­sid­ered includ­ing Alec Guinness, Albert Finney, Dirk Bogard, and Anthony Hopkins.  Reportedly Dustin Hoffman was inter­est­ed in the role but took the lead role in Tootsie. The role was even­tu­al­ly giv­en to Ben Kingsley, whose father was of Indian descent. Kingsley’s birth name was Krishna Bhanji, but he changed it after he began to appear on stage. 

Kingsley pre­pared for the role by read­ing up on Gandhi and study­ing old news­reels. The choice of Kingsley for the role and his efforts at por­tray­ing Gandhi paid off for the stu­dio and for Kingsley, as he won an Oscar for Best Actor at the Academy Awards. In fact, the film was nom­i­nat­ed for eleven Oscars and won eight, includ­ing Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay. The film was also nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar for Best Original Score (Ravi Shankar and George Fenton). 

Reportedly, Ravi Shankar imme­di­ate­ly agreed to be involved in the music. He and Indian musi­cians went to London to work on the sound­track. For those who may not be famil­iar with him, Ravi Shankar is a mas­ter of the sitar and clas­si­cal Indian music (and one of my favorite musicians).

Other well-known actors appear­ing in the film include Candice Bergen as Margaret Bourke-White, John Gielgud as Lord Irwin, Trevor Howard as Judge Broomfield, and Martin Sheen as Walker.

The scene depict­ing Gandhi’s funer­al had 300,000 extras par­tic­i­pat­ing.  Over 200,000 of those extras vol­un­teered to par­tic­i­pate in that scene.  That made it into Guinness Book of World Records for the largest num­ber of extras ever in one scene.  It was shot on January 31,1981, the 33^rd anniver­sary of Gandhi’s death, and uti­lized eleven film crews.

Edward R. Murrow, a well-known tele­vi­sion reporter at the time, was quot­ed say­ing at the report­ing of the funer­al: “The object of this mas­sive trib­ute died as he had always lived — a pri­vate man with­out wealth, with­out prop­er­ty, with­out offi­cial title or office.  Mahatma Gandhi was not a com­man­der of great armies nor ruler of vast lands.  He could boast no sci­en­tif­ic achieve­ments or artis­tic gift.  Yet men, gov­ern­ments and dig­ni­taries from all over the world have joined hands today to pay homage to this lit­tle brown man in the loin­cloth who led his coun­try to freedom.”

Reviews of the film were very pos­i­tive.  The review­er in Newsweek stat­ed, “There are very few movies that absolute­ly must be seen.  Sir Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi is one of them . . . Ben Kingsley . . . gives what is pos­si­bly the most aston­ish­ing bio­graph­i­cal per­for­mance in screen history.”

The review­er for The New York Times wrote: “Gandhi, who was born a Hindu but who preached the broth­er­hood of men under one God, was assas­si­nat­ed in Delhi by a Hindu fanat­ic.  His is one of the great sto­ries of mod­ern times.  Of more impor­tance is the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the film will bring Gandhi to the atten­tion of a lot of peo­ple around the world for the first time, not as a saint but as a self-search­ing, some­times fal­li­ble human being with a sense of humor as well as of history.”

The review­er in Variety wrote: The thin voice of the aging Gandhi, whose life was end­ed at age 78 by an assas­s­in’s bul­let in 1948, should ring out loud and clear from the screen to remind the world that for all our tech­no­log­i­cal progress the mind and heart of mankind remains in the dark ages, surg­ing with envy, greed and bigotry.” 

This was writ­ten in 1982.  We con­tin­ue to see the envy, greed and big­otry today in 2024. 

Roger Ebert wrote: “What is impor­tant about this film is not that it serves as a his­to­ry les­son (although it does) but that . . . it reminds us that we are, after all, human, and thus capa­ble of the most extra­or­di­nary and won­der­ful achieve­ments, sim­ply through the use of our imag­i­na­tion, our will, and our sense of right.” 

In 1998 the American Film Institute nom­i­nat­ed Gandhi for their list of Top 100 Greatest American Movies and in their 2005 list of movies nom­i­nat­ed for 100 Years of Film Scores.  Steven Schneider also includes Gandhi in his book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

Gandhi’s accom­plish­ments and his staunch belief in the pow­er of non-vio­lence to cre­ate change should be acknowl­edged, and this film does a grand job of that.  He was a human being, and all human beings have their flaws and faults.  But he was com­mit­ted to what he saw as free­dom and equal­i­ty for oth­ers and ded­i­cat­ed his life to that end.

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) gives Gandhi a score of 8.0 of 10.  Rotten Tomatoes gives it a crit­ics’ score of 89% and an audi­ence score of 92%.

In search­ing my Roku devices, I found the film avail­able for free stream­ing on byutv.  There is also a copy of the film on DVD at the Clark County Public Library. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon.  Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed.  More infor­ma­tion about the next film is avail­able on the library’s web­site and Facebook page, as well as WinCity Voices Facebook page.