No man's life can be encompassed in one telling

Rating: 8/10 (11 July 2014)

Richard Attenborough had long cherished the ambition of making a film about Mahatma Gandhi, an ambition dating back at least to the early sixties, and eventually got to realise his dream some twenty years later. The film does not cover Gandhi's early life but opens with his assassination by the Hindu fanatic Nathuram Godse and then jumps backwards to what was to become a defining episode in his life, the time in 1893 when he was thrown out of a first-class carriage in Natal, despite having a first-class ticket, something which opened his eyes to the reality of racial discrimination. The film then deals with his fight for the rights of Indians in what were then the British Crown Colonies of the Cape Colony and Natal. (The film gives the rather misleading impression that South Africa already existed as a united nation in the 1890s; in fact it did not become a single Dominion until 1910).
Even after his return to India, Gandhi's political ambitions were still rather limited; he initially fought for greater rights for Indians within the British Empire, and even supported the British war effort in 1914-18. Gradually, however, he became concerted to the idea of full Indian independence, and the film chronicles his struggle to achieve this through a policy of non-violent non-cooperation. A key event in the evolution of his political thought appears to have been the Amritsar massacre of 1919 when over 300 protesters were shot dead in cold blood by troops under the command of General Dyer.
In some respects the film raises more questions than it answers. It does not explain why Indians who had been so keen to adopt Gandhi's strategy of non-violence during the independence struggle could not find a non- violent solution to the disputes between Hindus and Muslims. (Several hundred thousand people died in sectarian violence during Partition). Nor does it explore the motivation of (or even acknowledge the existence of) those Indian nationalists who rejected non-violence, such as Subhas Chandra Bhose's pro-Axis Indian National Army. Nor does Attenborough really tackle philosophical objections to non-violence, such as George Orwell's celebrated dictum that those who abjure violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf. Gandhi's attitude to Nazism during the war struck many Britons, even those who were otherwise sympathetic to the Indian cause, as being at best naive, at worst ambivalent. Pakistanis might well take exception to the rather negative portrayal of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of their country.
These, however, are not really criticisms of the film as a film. Yes, it is rather too hagiographic for my tastes, but then it is Richard Attenborough's film, not mine, and he had the right to show the world Gandhi as he saw him. As he himself put it "No man's life can be encompassed in one telling", honestly admitting that, like all biopics, this is an edited version of the life of its subject, deliberately edited to produce a coherent view of a man's life as seen from a particular viewpoint.
And it must be admitted that Attenborough carries out his task with great skill. He was lucky to find the right actor for the job in the shape of Ben Kingsley who accepts a difficult challenge and makes this into the role of a lifetime. Kingsley's Gandhi dominates the screen, a man who combines great humanity with great strength of will, who manages to be both simple and profound. The role won Kingsley a well-deserved "Best Actor" Oscar and launched him on a stellar career.
None of the rest of the cast can compete with Kingsley, although there are several cameos by the great and the good of British cinema such as John Mills, John Gielgud and Trevor Howard. Perhaps the best of these comes from Edward Fox as the cold, heartless Dyer. I was less impressed by Gandhi's various British and American acolytes, who play a surprisingly large part in the film, as if to suggest that Indian independence could not have been won without the support of white liberals. Ian Charleson, last seen as Eric Liddell in "Chariots of Fire", here appears as another man of the cloth, the Revd Charles Freer Andrews. There are also bit-parts for Candice Bergen and Martin Sheen, as if to suggest that all those Oscars could not have been won by a British film without at least a token contribution from some Hollywood Big Names.
I am aware that "Gandhi's" Best Picture award is controversial among the militant wing of the Spielbergista movement, who resent it for depriving "ET" of the supreme honour, but I will reserve my comments on that particular controversy as I have not seen Spielberg's film since the eighties. (My own vote for "Best Film of 1982" would have gone to "Blade Runner", but we must remember that at the time the Academy only had available to them the original cut, not Ridley Scott's later director's cut). I will only say that, whatever one's view of Gandhi himself, there can be no denying that it is a superbly made film. It could perhaps have done with some discreet cutting to reduce its length by about 20 minutes, but it is nevertheless a monumental work. Some moments, particularly Gandhi's funeral and the heart-stopping recreation of the Amritsar Massacre, achieve a truly epic status. Following the success of "Chariots of Fire" the previous year, Attenborough confirmed the truth of Colin Welland's cry, "The British are coming!" Had the Academy not unaccountably preferred "Terms of Endearment" to "Educating Rita" in 1983, we would have made it a hat-trick. 8/10