Film

...his abhorrence of war and violence have been witnessed before in Oh What a Lovely War...

...the viewer must also be told what to think and feel...

...Directed and co-scripted by Bertrand Tavernier, whose intentions here are less than transparent, although the film's cryptic qualities are not an obstacle to enjoyment...

...It is difficult to imagine a viewer who would not be deeply moved by the scene...

...Unfortunately, the film's depiction of the tortuous struggle for Indian independence is somewhat sketchy, and the portrayal of Gandhi himself is incomplete...

...Briley has written roles without character for them (an English view of Americans...

...Intelligent, wickedly funny, and superbly acted by Phillip Noiret, Isabelle Huppert, Stephane Audran, and others...

...However much it may appear to contradict the spirit of Gandhi, though, Attenborough's huge undertaking will probably be justified by the degree to which it rescues Gandhiism from textbook obscurity...

...Nuclear proliferation, arms stockpiling, bloody wars in several corners of the globe, and rising tensions between the haves and the have-nots make this a good time to reconsider Gandhian principles...

...Fast-paced, stylish direction by Walter Hill (The Warriors...

...As an observer, Walker functions as a surrogate for the viewer, but his exemplary reaction deprives viewers of the opportunity to sort out their own feelings...

...Half Indian, half British, Kingsley manages with only a minimum of makeup to embody the Mahatma to an uncanny degree...

...The filmmakers appear eager to show the larger historical picture if doing so makes for an engaging spectacle, but they choose to overlook the past when ideological complexities are involved...

...A more artful, less lavish production would not be as likely to achieve this end...

...In Gandhi, she simply pops up one day and becomes a fixture of Gandhi's entourage...

...Still, there is more here than in most current film fare, including a fine, though occasionally mannered, performance by Meryl Streep and good work by Kevin Kline as Nathan...

...and uses them largely as foils to draw wit and wisdom from Gandhi...

...When the demonstrators reach it, the guards savagely beat them down with steel-coated staves...

...Attenborough, trying to drive home the significance of the confrontation, concludes the sequence with a shot of Walker telephoning his report of the incident...

...South African actor-playwright Athol Fugard as General Jan Christian Smuts...

...But Attenborough is not a particularly imaginative filmmaker, and much of the movie has the slightly old-fashioned look of a Masterpiece Theatre episode blown up for the big screen...

...Frances A film biography of Frances Farmer, an exceptionally bright, free-spirited, leftist-leaning actress who became a victim of the studio contract system, her own weaknesses for alcohol and drugs, and psychiatric oppression (forced internment, electric shock treatment, lobotomy...

...Nick Nolte is a gravelly-voiced Dirty Harry type with a soft heart under his macho bravado, and Eddie Murphy (from Saturday Night Live) provides most of the comedy...

...But while Gandhi does not offer an especially penetrating portrayal of its subject, it does remind us of the example and achievements of a great human being without indulging in hagiography...

...The entrance to the complex is guarded by a corps of Surat soldiers under the command of British officers...

...Alyque Padam-see as Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the dour president of the Moslem League, and Ro-hini Hattangady as Gandhi's wife, Kastur-bai...

...the economic and moral benefits of self-sufficiency...

...At a signal, the front row of the Gandhi column walks silently and deliberately toward the gate...

...the knowledge that diet is crucial to well being...

...As the savagery is unleashed, Walker turns away in revulsion and horror, holding his head in his hands...

...This interpretation of events, and most of the words placed in Walker's mouth, were actually those of an Indian—the nationalist poet Rabindranath Tagore, who put his views forward in a Manchester Guardian article...

...The filmmakers are even more reluctant than Fischer was, however, to provide some insight into the origins of Gandhi's behavior—his psychological makeup...

...Major credit for this faithful depiction must go to Ben Kingsley, a stage actor trained in the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre...

...Gandhi covers the period from Gandhi's arrival in South Africa, where he first developed the theory and practice of nonviolent resistance, to his assassination in 1948...

...By ignoring the intellectual tradition behind Gandhi's thought, the filmmakers make him appear more exotic than he was...

...The film comes off with the respectful air of an "authorized" biography, possibly because one third of the production funds came from the Indian government...

...Kingsley's performance makes one believe that Hindus and Moslems would stop killing one another to keep Gandhi from fasting to death...

...A viewer of Gandhi is likely, furthermore, to get the impression that Satya-graha, the notion of "soul force," just sprang into Gandhi's head...

...t is clear from watching Gandhi that At-tenborough put his heart and soul into the film—indeed, he had been trying to bring the idea to fruition for twenty years...

...Gandhi focuses mostly on the development of Mahatma Gandhi's ideas of nonviolent resistance and their importance in the struggle for India's independence...

...For example, the viewer learns near the end of the film that Gandhi had long been observing a vow of chastity, but there is no hint as to why...

...The film also suffers from overuse of close-ups and failure to establish any real sense of place either in America or in Eastern Europe...

...Other notable performances are delivered by Edward Fox as General R. E. H. Dyer, the butcher of Amritsar...

...Nor do Attenborough and Briley try to understand Gandhi's relationship to Madeline Slade, the daughter of a knighted British admiral, who became one of the Ma-hatma's most devoted disciples...

...The film begins as a rather interesting drama of pseudo-bigamy (with Dudley Moore as the platonic bigamist), and ends by wallowing in sentimentality...

...Jessica Lange, in the title role, delivers a stunning performance...

...the understanding that industrialization and high technology are not panaceas for the problems of developing countries, and the notion that we must change ourselves if we seek to change the world—all are germane to life in the 1980s...

...This is interesting material, but the film never quite decides just what story it wants to tell...

...Such a narrow focus is unavoidable, perhaps, since Gandhi's long and meticulously documented life encompassed enough well-known events to fill more than three hours...

...The movie points to experiences that influenced him, but slights the indisputable intellectual impact on Gandhi of Thoreau, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Christian Gospels, and Tolstoy...

...The least convincing performances are those of the two Americans, Candice Bergen, who depicts photographer Margaret Bourke-White, and Martin Sheen, who plays Walker, a New York Times reporter...

...There is no resistance...

...Viewers of the film may discover that many of Gandhi's ideas and perceptions seem more urgent and useful today than they were in his lifetime...

...But Attenborough and his scenarist, John Briley, seem to want it both ways: Historical complexities are ignored to concentrate on the personal story, yet several of the film's most electric sequences are devoted to events in which Gandhi did not participate—the 1919 massacre at Amrit-sar, the nonviolent "raid" on the Dharsana salt works, the burning of a police station and slaughter of the officers by an enraged mob...

...They are confronted by a seemingly endless formation of empty-handed, white-clad Gandhi followers...

...An example can be found in one of the most poignant sequences in the film, depicting the nonviolent "raid" on the Dharsana salt works...

...Attenborough, however, does not leave well enough alone: He cuts to shots of Walker, the newspaper reporter, watching the ghastly event from the back of a distant truck...

...he looks like Gandhi and effortlessly reproduces Gandhi's characteristic gestures...

...Six Weeks The central pretext for this story is a precocious, charming girl who is dying of leukemia and wants to fill her final days with meaningful accomplishments...

...The same spectacle is repeated over and over with the same ferocity—and it becomes unbearable...

...In just over three hours, Attenborough recreates a vital piece of history to which little attention has been paid in the West and illuminates the life of a great moral and political leader...

...For the most part, the film sticks closely to Louis Fischer's conventional biography of the Indian leader, shifting from scenes of Gandhi's public actions and occasional grand historical incidents to intimate scenes revealing Gandhi's efforts to remake himself in accordance with his ideals...

...0 Hits and Misses Sophie's Choice Alan Pakula's disappointing adaptation of the William Styron novel loses much in condensation—Styron's Southern analogy, the content of Stingo's first novel, Brooklyn (with the exception of the boarding house and Brooklyn Bridge), Sophie's early life in Warsaw, much of the depiction of Auschwitz, and most of the secondary characters...

...48Hrs...

...Blood flows, and some of the pacifists are pummeled unconscious...

...The wounded are carried on stretchers to a makeshift field hospital...

...Kingsley's most stunning achievement is representing Gandhi's gradual transformation from a young, slightly pompous Indian Anglophile—complete with clipped British accerft—into the Mahatmaji (Great Soul) whose humane selflessness and spiritual force were felt by millions...

...Attenborough demonstrates a genuine affinity for Gandhiism...

...Gandhi had helped plan the Dharsana action, but had no personal connection with the other incidents...

...It is ironic that a $22 million movie should be devoted to the story of a "half-naked fakir"—as Winston Churchill dismissed Gandhi—who spun his own loincloths and owned no more than a pair of glasses, a watch, sandals, spoons, a couple of bowls, and a book of songs...

...Gandhiism is, in short, relevant: Resistance to illegitimate authority...

...FILM Michael H. Seitz Gandhi for Today Richard Attenborough's Gandhi is an extraordinarily impressive and affecting motion picture—a huge, expansively drawn work utilizing eighty-seven settings, most of them in India, more than 150 major or minor characters, and hundreds of thousands of extras...

...Any motion picture that can stimulate people to think of such things needs no other justification...

...Gandhi is shown to be fallible, occasionally impatient, and often impishly witty...

...The movie tends to ignore the contributions of other nationalist leaders, especially those Indian socialists and Marxists with whom Gandhi often found himself at odds...

...Last year's great epic film, Reds, was much more open to ideological discord...

...To Attenborough, the action itself is insufficient to convey his intended message...

...There was a United Press reporter at Dharsana, but his dispatches were largely descriptive...

...Coup de Torchon (Clean Slate) The official French entry in the Academy Award competition—an anti-colonialist drama with elements of black comedy and sociopolitical parable, set in French West Africa on the eve of World War II...

...The "raid," Walker asserts, signals a great moral defeat for Europe and the beginning of Indian freedom...

...Another column of Gandhiists advances calmly toward the entrance and is brutally beaten to the ground...

...A rather endearing interracial buddy-buddy comedy, in the guise of a violent police thriller...

...Gandhi is a work of great sincerity, a class production in epic scale...