Gandhi the Major Motion Picture

Rating: 10/10 (15 December 2015)

GANDHI not surprisingly is about the life, activism, and impact of its title character, Mohandas K. Gandhi. I hate to admit it but before I watched this movie I knew essentially nothing about him. I knew he was an important leader in the liberation of India from England's rule but the real implication of his actions throughout his life had never really been brought to my attention. To understand Gandhi a person has to study a fifty-year period of history that includes both major events in India as well as Africa. This is where the film really shines; it takes all these events and presents them concisely by focusing on Gandhi and relating the events he was involved in to him instead of starting with the events and including the players as almost an afterthought the way many text books would. This makes the information easily accessible for anyone regardless of foreknowledge.
The film opens with 300,000 extras attending Gandhi's funeral, more than any movie made before or since, to capture the scope of how revered he really was. These people are packed along the street as his coffin is moved through the city suggesting far greater numbers as if everyone in India was there. As this spectacle is being shown a radio station reporter's monologue played. He is trying to put into words, overwhelmed but still very articulate, how extraordinarily important the life that had just ended was to the world. He notes that Gandhi never held a political office, was not a religious leader, and never held any authoritarian title and yet people followed him with an unrivaled dedication.
The way he used hunger strikes and risked his own health to keep the protest from becoming riots by starving himself until people behaved is shown in a way that articulates his actions and motives perfectly. The way the film addresses the problems faced by the cotton farmers really reminds me of the way films such as the GRAPES OF WRATH, BOUND FOR GLORY and many others depict the struggles of farmers during the depression in America. The film also shows how India's sovereignty leads to the formation of Pakistan by India's Islamic minority, something that I was not familiar with before seeing the movie.
Director, Richard Attenborough (perhaps best known by audiences as the Colonel Sanders impersonating proprietor of Jurassic Park) struggled for over twenty years to get support for this movie to be made and it couldn't have been any better if he had spent every day of those twenty some ought years creating this film. So much information is presented here with a degree of accuracy that is almost never seen in a Hollywood production (THE DOORS, it's like a slap in the face for their fans;) I'm truly surprised it's not used as a teaching tool in all history classes. More than its informative value, this movie is a fitting a tribute to the man who is the figurehead for peaceful protest, pacifism, and all positive changes is government policy. He was a person who didn't need a legend because his factual acts outdid any possible fallacies and I learned most of what I know about him from this movie.