Attenborough's crowning achievement as a director.
Gandhi (1982)
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Reviews Counted:39
Fresh:33
Rotten:6
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: 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.
Runtime: 3 hrs 11 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Richard Attenborough's award-winning epic recounts the life and times of Mahatma Gandhi. In South Africa, a young Indian lawyer is booted off a train for refusing to ride second-class. Fed up... Richard Attenborough's award-winning epic recounts the life and times of Mahatma Gandhi. In South Africa, a young Indian lawyer is booted off a train for refusing to ride second-class. Fed up with the unjust political system, he joins the Indian Congress Party, which encourages social change through passive resistance. When his "subversive" activities land him in jail, masses of low-skilled workers strike to support his non-violent yet revolutionary position. Back in India, Gandhi renounces the Western way of life and struggles to organize Indian labor against British colonialism. A strike costs many British soldiers their lives, so the crown responds by slaughtering 1,500 Indians. Enraged, the ascetic, spiritual leader continues to preach pacifism until he has lead India out from under the tyranny of British imperialism. [More]
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud
Starring: Ben Kingsley, Candice Bergen, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, Martin Sheen, Athol Fugard, Amrish Puri, Roshan Seth, Ian Bannen, Nigel Hawthorne, Om Puri
Director: Richard Attenborough
Director: Richard Attenborough
Screenwriter: John Briley
Producer: Richard Attenborough
Composer: Ravi Shankar
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Reviews for Gandhi
Ben Kingsley's title performance is amazing, particularly in the way he ages across the five decades which the film depicts.
Once in a long while a motion picture so eloquently expressive and technically exquisite comes along that one is tempted to hail it as being near perfect.
It's safe to say that if you knew nothing about Gandhi before going in to the movie, you wouldn't know a whole lot more coming out.
Gandhi is less personal than Reds, but also less complacent than Chariots of Fire and less doddering than Lean's own orderly post-colonial apologia, A Passage to India.
Every bit the biopic that Patton was, Gandhi is emotionally engaging but taxing on the viewer's stamina. Ben Kingsley is astounding.
Despite an intelligent title performance by Ben Kingsley and impressive cinematography in the manner of David Lean, this huge, clunky biopic offers less than meets the eye.
Attenborough's work lacks even the undercurrent of personality that David Lean brought to his films: the film has no flavor but that of the standard Hollywood hagiography.
Despite an intelliegnt performance by Ben Kingsley in the lead, Attenborousgh's biopic is disappointingly conventional, failing to illuminate the venerable leader or the socio-political context in which he lived.
Its faults rather pale beside the epic nature of its theme, and Kingsley's performance in the central role is outstanding.
Overshadowing even Ben Kingsley's astonishing, transcendent performance in his first major screen role is a larger, more formidable presence: that of Gandhi himself.
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