Gandhi (film)

While heading to afternoon prayers in New Delhi on January 30, 1948, Gandhi is fatally shot. On 7 June 1893, in the Colony of Natal, young lawyer Mohandas Gandhi is forcibly expelled from a whites-only train carriage in Pietermaritzburg despite possessing a valid ticket, subsequently campaigning for racial equality among whites and Indians in both the Colony of Natal and the Cape Colony. Dada Abdullah, president of the Natal Indian Congress, notices his campaign and invites him to a demonstration where he burns his pass. After the Second Boer War, the British colonial government attempts to have Indians fingerprinted like criminals. Gandhi responds with peaceful demonstrations, but is arrested. The government releases Gandhi and relents by granting some rights to Indians, fulfilling his short-term goal. Anglican clergyman Charles Freer Andrews joins his mission, and American journalist Vince Walker takes special interest in him. Gandhi works at his ashram alongside associates such as Andrews, Hermann Kallenbuch, and later Mirabehn. Gandhi returns to India in 1915 where he is invited to the Indian National Congress (INC), led by Sardar Patel, Jawaharlal Nehru, Maulana Azad, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who is advocating India's self-rule, and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who becomes his mentor. Jinnah supports Gandhi's involvement but opposes his unconventional approach. At a meeting of the Congress, Gandhi's speech captivates the ensemble, especially Patel. Gandhi pledges allegiance to the British Empire in World War I, but simultaneously demands self-rule. His satyagrahas at Champaran and Kheda are brutally curtailed by the British. Despite India's wartime involvement, the administration passes the Rowlatt Act in 1919, which the movement sees as betrayal. While a crowd listens to speeches about freedom, Colonel Reginald Dyer orders his Nepalese soldiers (Gurkhas) and Indian soldiers (sepoys) to fire upon them in what becomes the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Jinnah suggests non-cooperation to protesting British rule, and Gandhi surprisingly agrees. Its immediate success causes protesters to kill and burn police officers in what becomes the Chauri Chaura incident. Disgusted, Gandhi calls off the non-cooperation movement, enraging Jinnah, quelling the masses by fasting. In 1930, Gandhi is arrested and sent to prison because of his Salt March to defy the British monopoly on India's salt. After being released, Gandhi is invited to London by Ramsay MacDonald to attend the Round Table conferences regarding future Dominion status for India. However, they prove fruitless, and Gandhi and the other Congress leaders are imprisoned during World War II. While under house arrest, Gandhi's wife Kasturba dies. Dissatisfied by the Congress and Gandhi, Jinnah resigns and returns to the Muslim League, where he begins the Pakistan Movement's demands for the Muslim minority's secession to form Pakistan, against Gandhi's wishes. In 1945, Viceroy Louis Mountbatten declares India's upcoming independence. Gandhi offers Jinnah the Prime Ministry and choice of cabinet. Nehru agrees to it to maintain independence, but Jinnah declines, stating that only Pakistani independence with him as leader will ensure Muslim safety. India and Pakistan finally gain their independence in August 1947, and millions of people migrate into the two newly formed countries, but sectarian violence between Hindus and Muslims erupts. The Indian military attempts to control uprisings in Delhi and Bombay while Calcutta devolves into chaos. Devastated, Gandhi once again calms the violence by fasting. Gandhi advises a concerned Hindu man, upset about murdering a Muslim infant to avenge his son's death in the violence, to find a similarly orphaned Muslim boy and raise him as a faithful Muslim. The film returns to Gandhi's assassination. His casket is carted throughout Delhi with the mourning party of Nehru (now Prime Minister), numerous citizens, government officials, and international dignitaries. His ashes are poured into the Ganges, and he is mourned by the leaders of the Congress and the wider Indian independence movement. ==Cast==

This film had been Richard Attenborough's dream project, although two previous attempts at filming had failed. In 1952, Gabriel Pascal secured an agreement with the Prime Minister of India (Jawaharlal Nehru) to produce a film of Gandhi's life. However, Pascal died in 1954 before preparations were completed. In 1962, Attenborough was contacted by Motilal Kothari, an Indian-born civil servant working with the Indian High Commission in London and a devout follower of Gandhi. Kothari insisted that Attenborough meet him to discuss a film about Gandhi. Attenborough agreed, after reading Louis Fischer's biography of Gandhi and spent the next 18 years attempting to get the film made. He was able to meet prime minister Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi through a connection with Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India. Nehru approved of the film and promised to help support its production, but his death in 1964 was one of the film's many setbacks. Attenborough would dedicate the film to the memory of Kothari, Mountbatten, and Nehru. David Lean and Sam Spiegel had planned to make a film about Gandhi after completing The Bridge on the River Kwai, reportedly with Alec Guinness as Gandhi. Ultimately, the project was abandoned in favour of Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Attenborough reluctantly approached Lean with his own Gandhi project in the late 1960s, and Lean agreed to direct the film and offered Attenborough the lead role. Instead Lean began filming ''Ryan's Daughter'', during which time Motilai Kothari had died and the project fell apart. Attenborough again attempted to resurrect the project in 1976 with backing from Warner Bros. Then prime minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India and filming would be impossible. Co-producer Rani Dube persuaded prime minister Indira Gandhi to provide the first $10 million from the National Film Development Corporation of India, chaired by D. V. S. Raju at that time, on the back of which the remainder of the funding was finally raised. Finally, in 1980 Attenborough was able to secure the remainder of the funding needed to make the film. Screenwriter John Briley had introduced him to Jake Eberts, the chief executive at the new Goldcrest production company that raised approximately two-thirds of the film's budget. Filming began on 26 November 1980 and ended on 10 May 1981. Some scenes were shot near Koilwar Bridge, in Bihar. Over 300,000 extras were used in the funeral scene, the most for any film, according to Guinness World Records. Casting During pre-production, there was much speculation as to who would play the role of Gandhi. The choice was Ben Kingsley, who is partly of Indian heritage (his father was Gujarati and his birth name is Krishna Bhanji). ==Release==

Gandhi premiered in New Delhi, India, on 30 November 1982. Two days later, on 2 December, it had a Royal Premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London in the presence of Prince Charles and Princess Diana before opening to the public the following day. The film had a limited release in the US starting on Wednesday, 8 December 1982, followed by a wider release in January 1983. ==Reception==

Critical response Reviews were broadly positive worldwide. Time, the Washington Post, The Public Historian, Cross Currents, The Journal of Asian Studies, Film Quarterly, The Progressive, The Christian Century Ben Kingsley's performance was especially praised. Among the few who took a more negative view of the film, historian Lawrence James called it "pure hagiography" while anthropologist Akhil Gupta said it "suffers from tepid direction and a superficial and misleading interpretation of history." Also Indian novelist Makarand R. Paranjape has written that "Gandhi, though hagiographical, follow a mimetic style of film-making in which cinema, the visual image itself, is supposed to portray or reflect 'reality'". The film was also criticised by some right-wing commentators who objected to the film's advocacy of nonviolence, including Pat Buchanan, Emmett Tyrrell and Richard Grenier. In Time, Richard Schickel wrote that in portraying Gandhi's "spiritual presence... Kingsley is nothing short of astonishing." and placed it fifth on his 10 best films of 1983. In Newsweek, Jack Kroll stated that "There are very few movies that absolutely must be seen. Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi is one of them." In addition to Gandhi, this cycle also included Heat and Dust (1983), Octopussy (1983), The Jewel in the Crown (1984), The Far Pavilions (1984) and A Passage to India (1984). Patrick French negatively reviewed the film, writing in The Telegraph: An important origin of one myth about Gandhi was Richard Attenborough's 1982 film. Take the episode when the newly arrived Gandhi is ejected from a first-class railway carriage at Pietermaritzburg after a white passenger objects to sharing space with a "coolie" (an Indian indentured labourer). In fact, Gandhi's demand to be allowed to travel first-class was accepted by the railway company. Rather than marking the start of a campaign against racial oppression, as legend has it, this episode was the start of a campaign to extend racial segregation in South Africa. Gandhi was adamant that "respectable Indians" should not be obliged to use the same facilities as "raw Kaffirs". He petitioned the authorities in the port city of Durban, where he practised law, to end the indignity of making Indians use the same entrance to the post office as blacks, and counted it a victory when three doors were introduced: one for Europeans, one for Asiatics and one for Natives. Richard Grenier in his 1983 article, The Gandhi Nobody Knows, which was also the title of the book of the same name and topic, also criticized the film, arguing it misportrayed him as a "saint". He also alleged the Indian government admitted to financing about a third of the film's budget. He also criticized the film's portrayal of Muhammed Ali Jinnah, although he does not elaborate much on this criticism. Grenier's book later became an inspiration for G. B. Singh's book Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity. Parts of the book also discuss the film negatively. One notable person, Mark Boyle (better known as "The Moneyless Man") has stated that watching the film was the moment that changed his life and said that after that, he took Mahatma Gandhi's message of peace and non-violence to heart and that the film inspired him to become an activist. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 111 reviews and judged 89% of them to be positive, with an average rating of 8.30/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "Director Richard Attenborough is typically sympathetic and sure-handed, but it's Ben Kingsley's magnetic performance that acts as the linchpin for this sprawling, lengthy biopic." Metacritic gave the film a score of 79 out of 100 based on 16 critical reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". CinemaScore reported that audiences gave the film a rare "A+" grade. In 2010, the Independent Film & Television Alliance selected the film as one of the 30 Most Significant Independent Films of the last 30 years. The film was included by the Vatican in a list of important films compiled in 1995, under the category of "Values". Box office The film grossed $81,917 in its first 6 days at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. In the United States and Canada, it grossed $183,583 in its first 5 days from 4 theatres (Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City; Uptown Theater in Washington D.C.; Century Plaza in Los Angeles; and the York in Toronto). Due to the running time, it could be shown only three times a day. It went on to gross in the United States and Canada, Outside of the United States and Canada, the film grossed in the rest of the world, the third highest for the year. It is one of the top ten highest-grossing British independent films of all time adjusted for inflation. The film grossed a total of worldwide. The film was successful on home video, with over 50,000 copies sold in the United States in 1983 at a retail price. Accolades American Film Institute • AFI's 100 years... 100 Cheers – number 29 • AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes & Villains • Mahatma Gandhi – number 21 Hero ==See also==