When I first saw this classic film at the cinema, the audience applauded at both the intermission and the end (it is a long work of 188 minutes). Although the narrative covers over five decades in Gandhi’s life, a major segment concerns the the process by which independence of India and Pakistan was brought about and the huge loss of life and massive migrations that resulted. When I saw the events of 1947 portrayed in the 2017 film “Viceroy’s House”, I was encouraged to revisit the earlier film which I think deals with these events more powerfully.<\/p>\n
“Gandhi” was a triumph both for Richard Attenborough, as producer and director, who worked for 20 years to bring the story to the big screen and for Ben Kingsley, a man whose father was Indian but who had until then had a minor profile, proving to be a superlative choice for the eponymous role. The cinematography is wonderful, making superb use of local filming in India and evocative of some of the work of David Lean.<\/p>\n
The huge cast represents a rich array of British thespianism (as well as American and Indian actors) with cameo roles for stars such as John Mills, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard and James Fox and even a tiny role for Daniel Day-Lewis who would go on to be a towering talent. Finally the script by John Briley works well in communicating essential information with some effective lines.<\/p>\n
Arguably the film is a little too reverential and at times it is a trifle ponderous, but these are minor reservations. It went on to win no less than eight Academy Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first saw this classic film at the cinema, the audience applauded at both the intermission and the end (it is a long work of 188 minutes). Although the narrative covers over five decades in Gandhi’s life, a major segment concerns the the process by which independence of India and Pakistan was brought about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21365"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21367,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21365\/revisions\/21367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}