Another slightly over-rated 80s movie

Rating: 8/10 (31 May 2008)

This film had been a pet project of Sir Richard Attenborough's which took almost quarter of a century to reach the screen. Sir Richard is a very staunch pacifist and Gandhi is definitely the one of the greatest pacifists within living memory. This film certainly taught us all a great deal more about him and introduced many to his very sensible maxim "An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind". Although his approach to his religion was too strict for many people it is very creditable how ecumenical he was. He declared himself not just a Hindu but a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim and a Buddhist. His adherence to his pacifism was remarkable and he achieved infinitely more by being not violent than anyone could by being violent. One of his other sayings, not quoted in the film, was "I am against violence. The good it does is only temporary. The evil it does is permanent". Very true! The pace of the film, though, is a bit slow. It plods along like the Mahatma on one of his protest marches and has a bit of a history lesson air to it. Certainly, until I saw this film I had never heard of the Amritsar massacre. It is good the scene where General Dyer says at the enquiry that he would have given aid to any wounded who had "applied" and then the barrister asks "General Dyer, how does a child shot with a 303 Lee Enfield "apply" for help?". He has no answer to give. It is very poignant the following scene where Gandhi and Pandit Nehru are looking down the well which several people jumped down in order to escape the fusillade of bullets. None of them survived. The film though does contain a few slightly melodramatic touches, characteristic of Richard Attenborough, such as the wee one crying next to his slain mother during the massacre. I have not seen the actor Peter Harlow in any other films but he is absolutely spot on as Lord Mountbatten, to whom the film is dedicated, a man who took a great deal of interest in this film during its long gestation and who was tragically and brutally murdered by the IRA. A demonstration of how pointless violence is. Although this film is good, like a lot of early 80s films it is a bit over-rated. Like Chariots of Fire, if it were being made nowadays it would be a lot more impressive with the help of a bit of CGI. It would also be different in that we have a very different approach to historic films nowadays.