To me, an incendiary, incandescent, irrefutable yea-say to "humanity"

Rating: 10/10 (4 July 2006)

At this late date, and with scarce a voice dissenting from Sir Richard Attenborough's incomparable effort and an equally incomparable investment of the Gandhi legend by Ben Kingsley's astonishing portrayal, I find myself musing on a recent Indian, read "Rast" Indian assay herein of the recent DVD reissue, wherein the "reviewer" gave the packet two stars out of five? Well, as I understood it, the two stars were for the packaging, which was wondrously western and totally hip and with-it in terms of the latest wrinkles of digital wizardries, and the three absent were chalked up to the East Indian perceptions of patronizing "western" observers. BRAVO! And Bingo!!! Said Indian critic critiqued the absolute absence of recognition of the Indian artists -- actors and technicians alike -- who were abysmally "diss'd" by purveyors who wouldn't know a sitar from a sitarist. Nor do I, actually, the Beatleses' Harrison notwithstanding, and John Lennon's Yoko still suffering the slings and arrows of outraged WASPish types. Why does my "left" eyebrow arch in arch cognizance? Well, some 62 or so years ago, I was an in-the-flesh witness, on set, AFTER having er, ah "limned" some five "bit" and "extra" characters for MGM's "Dragon Seed." Our Katherine Hepburn as "Jade" AFTER Luise Rainer's "The Good Earth" epic. I was smart enough to stay away from the latter, but, hey!, I was being paid a princely weekly stipend at MGM. Still, as I watched this Gollywood "Chinese" clan, I was hard put not to guffaw. Check the castings: from Walter Huston and Aline MacMahon to Hurd Hatfield and Akim Tamiroff, the idiocies were difficult to envision much less comprehend. "Gandhi" was, by unfair parallel, a model of respect and accuracy, and I doubt that even an Indian critic would fault Ben Kingsley. What Am I trying to say here? It is time for ALL nations and ALL ethnocultural partisans to set aside their picturesque, picaresque?, notions about one another. Time to show enlightened and respectful acknowledgments of one another. And I can think of no better example than "Gandhi."