Surely the British are not that stupid.

Rating: Null/10 (24 December 2014)

A wonderful and important movie, I never saw it back in the 1980s nor any time since, probably because I knew it is over 3 hours long. But, confined to my TV room recuperating from foot surgery, I watched it today. I found it on Netflix streaming movies.
The movie received a whole host of awards, including Oscars for best picture and best actor, Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi. In fact he so looked the role that many people in India during filming thought he was the ghost of Gandhi.
The movie is very long, and it moves very deliberately especially during most of the last hour, but all of it is interesting.
It starts in India in 1948, with his point-blank assassination in 1948. Then it switches to 1893 South Africa where Gandhi, a lawyer fresh from his London education, first got exposed to blatant discrimination, just for the color of his skin. He did his first work there for non- violent resistance to effect needed change in unjust laws.
The rest of the movie spans about 1913 through 1948 in India, much of it covering his working through non-violent resistance to eventually gain self-rule for India. At one point when asked by a British official "Do you expect us to just walk out?" The answer was in the numbers, 100 Thousand British and 300 Million Indians.
The movie is as much an indictment of British stupidity as it is Gandhi's work for rights. Good movie.