Outstanding depiction of Gandhi and his time

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2016)

Gandhi (1982) was directed by Lord Richard Attenborough. It stars Sir Ben Kingsley as Rohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi. This is a superb film, which I saw when it was released, and which I've just seen again on DVD.
Director Attenborough pulled out all the stops when he cast this film. We see such actors as Trevor Howard, John Gielgud, John Mills, and Martin Sheen. However, the film is called Gandhi, it's about Gandhi, and everything depends on the actor playing Gandhi.
Luckily for us, Attenborough cast Ben Kingsley in the lead role. He's a great actor, he's on the screen most of the time, and he's outstanding. Watching this movie is an experience that makes you ask, "How does he do it." How can an actor embody a role in such a way that you think you are watching Gandhi himself, and not someone playing Gandhi in a movie? You'll have to ask Ben Kingsley, because I certainly don't have the answer.
This is a long film, shown in theaters with an intermission. It's noisy, colorful, and sometimes violent. This works well for us as viewers, because we are watching a movie about a noisy, colorful, and sometimes violent time and place.
Attenborough wasn't perfect. I think he wasted the talents of Geraldine James as Mirabehn, a woman who left her upper-class English life to become Gandhi's disciple. We see her often enough, but usually she is in the background, putting a cool compress on Gandhi's brow, or giving him his first bites of food after he has been fasting. She's not given a chance to show herself as a three-dimensional character.
Candice Bergen plays the famous photographer Margaret Bourke-White. It's true that Bourke-White took iconic photographs of Gandhi, but when she shows up in the film, she appears to have wandered onto the wrong movie set. It's as if the script said, "Bourke-White arrives, looks beautiful, takes some photos, looks beautiful again, and then leaves." She received co-star billing, when she really had just a cameo role. It doesn't hurt to be famous and, well, beautiful.
This is a movie that you should not miss. If you saw it when it was released, it's worth seeing again. "Gandhi" has stood the test of time, and it doesn't have an outdated feel to it.
A movie of this type was made to be shown in a theater, and that's where it will work best. However, it works very well on the small screen. Just don't miss this outstanding film.