"No man's life can be encompassed in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allotted weight, to include each event, each person who helped to shape a lifetime. What can be done is to be faithful in spirit to the record and to try to find one's way to the heart of the man..."
The cliché 'based on a true story' is avoided, no gimmick that conjures to mind so many 'historical' films whose links to truth are about as tenuous as the bridge in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Few films would have the temerity to immediately highlight its own restrictions and admit to being nothing more than a portrayal. Yet the film can hardly be accused of artifice, nothing is exaggerated; the crowds were that big, Gandhi was that defiant and the British imperialists were that powerless to control him. It inevitably omits bits of Gandhi's life like all films do, not even a three-hour film can cover every aspect of a person, from the perverse to the mundane. Gandhi is one of the last truly epic films, huge productions that took decades and counting extras in the hundreds of thousands (who were directed in Attenborough's usual gentle, eloquent style).
It is a film that wouldn't be made today, watchmojo.com dismissed it as an, "over-long, corny, snoozefest" with good acting. The cretins! A film does not feel long because of its length but because of it's flow. Gandhi is not dull! For decades the greatest film-makers tried and failed to depict the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, the master strategy of war. Attenborough successfully tackled the master strategist of peace. Gandhi is an important film because in a culture saturated by violence this is a rare film that highlights its futility and dire consequences; in this film violence is resorted to by those who have lost the argument.
For me two biopics stand above the rest; Gandhi and Lawrence of Arabia. Both revolve around individuals during major historical events which they both create and react to. It gives their actions a lot more gravitas; knowing the decisions they made moved masses. There are many great biopics (e.g. Raging Bull, Ray, Walk the Line) but they are usually about figures whose impact was only culture deep. In these films you are concentrating on every word, knowing that they could .have major repercussions not only in the story you see but beyond it into the millions of lives that have been determined by them.
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