If you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Rating: 3/10 (8 January 2006)

Was Gandhi a great person? The answer will always be "yes". Was he a leader in a possibly violent country? This film shows the answer to be "yes". Did he deserve a three-hour epic devoted to his life and teachings? This cinephile believes so. Did director Richard Attenborough successfully give his audience an unbiased story of Mohandas K. Gandhi, which included a personal element, a patriotic element, as well as a historical element? Sadly, my response to this is "no". There is no doubt in my mind that Attenborough created a beautiful, picturesque view of India controlled by British rule and chose a subject very close to his heart. There is quite a bit of emotion behind the film itself, but I finished watching this picture with a feeling that I didn't quite know Gandhi himself. I knew the work that he had accomplished, the power behind his teachings, but who was this little man from India? That is where I thought Attenborough completely missed the opportunity in this award-winning film. He gave us the images and the one-sided history lesson, but he completely forgot to develop his main character. How did this win so many awards?
I realize that the first paragraph of this review contains quite a bit of questions, but they were all questions that I had upon finishing this so-called grandiose epic. To begin, I do not believe that Ben Kingsley should have been awarded what he did for his role. He may have acted the part of Gandhi, but he (at least in my eyes) never looked the part. Here was a man who would stave himself for his people, but after such a long fast, Kingsley looked like he had just finished a couple of pizzas. I think I was expecting a sort of transformation as we saw Mr. Hanks do in Castaway, but alas, my ideas were quenched when Kingsley's belly bulged from his clothing. Also, who was this man? I saw so much passion in Kingsley when the film opened, but after that moment on the train, he seemed to be following his lines on script and leaving his true emotion to the curb. Was he the best actor for the role? I believe that he did a great job of "acting" like Gandhi, but I do not think he could be labeled as "the best". I needed more, sorry, meat to this character. I wanted to see Gandhi when he was in school, outside of the passive protests, with his family, but neither Kingsley nor Attenborough could give us this. I saw Gandhi on the screen, but that doesn't mean that I witnessed a true, strong, character-driven epic before my eyes. I saw beautiful pictures, but not enough about the beauty of this man.
Attenborough has the tendency to build really strong biography epics. I enjoyed watching Chaplin, though I didn't think it was a powerful enough story on Chaplin himself, it was nonetheless enjoyable. I enjoyed watching Gandhi, but I just felt that Attenborough fast-forwarded through some of the most crucial elements to this monumental man's life. One of the scenes that I was most looking forward to was Gandhi's powerful pilgrimage to the Indian Ocean. I was ready for this emotional tearjerker that would eventually culminate into demonstrating the true power of this little man. What I instead witnessed was three minutes of Gandhi walking out of his village and suddenly making it to the ocean with no such sign of fatigue or strain. It was mere minutes, when it should have been a bigger scene in this story. That is where Attenborough went wrong. His attention to detail seemed flawed. He was focused on the bigger picture, thus forgetting the power of the smaller stories. A great biography will attempt to do both. It will show the power of this figure on a grand scale, but then zoom in closer to the actual person so that we can see the inner struggles they were facing on a daily basis. A film that correctly gives us this true mix is Nixon. Stone's biography picture does a great job in giving us the man and the nation that didn't stand behind him.
Overall, I thought this was an enjoyable film to watch, but a horrid portrayal of this man's life. Throughout the film I continually felt pity for the British rule, and I am assuming that was not what Attenborough wanted to happen during this film. I wanted to see more behind Gandhi, more about the British rule (I do not believe they were as "evil" as depicted), and more about the people. I needed more information and less sweeping landscape images. There were even a couple of scenes where Attenborough had such great landscape happening that it covered up the words of Gandhi  is that how you build power towards this great man? I wish I could have seen more about the media coverage of Gandhi's life. While Martin Sheen and Candice Bergen were interesting in their own roles, I still felt as if they were so underdeveloped. There should have more connection between these active players and Gandhi. I continued to feel as if they slipped in and out of the scene as fast as Gandhi's "quick" pilgrimage. Gandhi is a man that deserves to have a motion picture devoted to him, I just do not believe that Gandhi was the film to best represent this powerful man's passionate mission!
Grade: ** out of *****