To Sir With Mixed feelings Sir Richard Attenborough compromised all his life to make one film Gandhi that made Indians feel proud of the man who became the father of the nation. Attenboroughs obsession to make Gandhi was so intact that it had never detracted him to make films and act in films not just to create a corpus for the film but also to extend his working career all through the madcap films made by the British film industry since 1942. He started his career in films as an actor working with legends like Noel Coward and David Lean then moved on to the RAF film unit where he appeared in films like A Matter of Life and Death, London Belongs to Me and Brighton Rock. Even before his famous grubby beard which marked him out in later films like Jurassic Park, Attenborough played an innocent middle-class boy in The Guinea Pig. He moved on to more cherubic roles with utter forgettability in many films in the 50s - Brothers in Law, The Man Upstairs - films you wont even get in the British Library now despite their cheerfulness. He started co-producing films and backing himself in roles with substance and realism. League of Gentlemen, Only Two can fly, The Great Escape,Seance on a Wet Afternoon, The flight of the Phoenix, The Sand pebbles, Dr Dolittle and many other films of which League of Gentlemen and Seance on a Wet Afternoon stood out as produced films. Only a few films made him richer. A Bridge Too Far was one of his most successful films which probably earned him all the money he needed to make one biopic on the life and times of Mahatma Gandhi based on the book titled the same by Louis Fisher. At that time Bobby Fischer, the chess player was more famous than Louis Fisher but Gandhis release ensured that Louis Fishers books sold more in the Western Hemisphere than Gandhis autobiography. Gandhi became well-known for its central character played by Ben Kingsley and the theme of non-violence which moved millions of people around the world in shaking off the last vestiges of colonialism and apartheid in parts of Africa and Asia. Surprisingly, Gandhi was expected to be a smashing hit with an epic starcast mostly borrowed from the Indian talent ruling the stage and art film circuit of the 80s - from Alyque Padamsee to Roshan Seth to Saed Jaffar. The film cast an indellible impression on the Indians of my generation who went to school and thought that Sholay was the best film ever possible. It introduced Gandhi to ourselves and I remember as a child, I started reading My Experiments with Truth only after seeing the film many number of times. It was dubbed in most Indian languages, got entertainment tax waived, made compulsory viewing by all the schools in India and got burnt in our national consciousness for a generation. Because cable television didnt come well until the 90s, Gandhi became a regular fixture on Doordarshan every year on most national holidays. If I had to review the film then, I would have given five stars for the film despite the loose-ended treatment of the holocaust of the great partition. Even today, whenever it is aired on television, I spot a glimpse of Gandhis greatness which an earlier viewing missed. The efforts to film Gandhi alone must have been herculean for Richard Attenborough who became Lord Richard Attenborough at the age of seventy. First, he was bootstrapping, then he realised he had not enough money, then he roped in NFDC to become a co-producer with sub-optimal rights (NFDC always cribbed this was a subterfuge to bankroll the film without equal co-production rights) and then enrolled massive regulars, extras and populous crowds into partaking in the footage of the film. I remember reading Alyque Padamsees autobiography where he says he did a potent ad in Delhis newspapers to call the public at large to get featured in the funeral passage of Gandhi - it still is the largest recorded funeral procession in movie history. Notwithstanding the epic scale and flawless execution, Gandhi misfired at the box office. Critics lauded the movie but trade pundits were aghast at the opening. The film clashed with Steven Spielbergs outlandish movie: E.T: The Extra Terrestrial in 1982, and competed for the 1983 best picture Oscar. ET opened on 1,103 screens and had first-weekend earnings of over $12 million. Gandhi opened on 4 screens and earned a mere $131,000 on its first weekend. The West trashed the biopic in trying to evoke a deja vu experience of a high school history lesson. It made money a tad better in India only but once again broke the financial backbone of Attenborough. But it pipped ET to the post picking the best picture Oscar besides Oscars for best writing, directing, lead actor, editing, cinematography, art direction and set decoration and costume design plus an Oscar nod for makeup. I was disappointed why the great Pandit Ravi Shankar didnt get an Oscar for best music. It is not unusual for historicals to get Oscar for best score even if the film is supposed to be carried by facts, like Lawrence of Arabia. Predictably, the film met with steep resistance in Pakistan. I remember, Lord Attenborough was then invited to make a similar biopic with all grants and backing from the Pakistani government - to make a film on their father of the nation - Jinnah. The film got made but never made it to the screens in major cinemas world over - it was banned in India even before its improbable release. But Jinnah is not Gandhi and there were no objective works to rely upon to make a great screenplay like John Briley. The film will never appear in the filmography of Lord Attenborough because he himself may have regretted to have made it - as one historical blunder with a myopic viewpoint to counter his own maginificent biopic. It shames any creator who makes films for the sake of celebrating divergence. Reminds me of the epic failure that met with Sir Edwin Arnold after publishing the hugely successful Light of Asia - a long-form poem written on the life of Buddha. Intoxicated by the success of it, Arnold wrote another epic poem on Jesus Christ titled Light of the World - it sank without an apology. Let that be. Back to Lord Attenborough. All his life, he acted in films and kept making sensible though elongated films right until 2007 as far as I can remember. His obsession with real heroes never dimmed. He made a film on Winston Churchill - the man who hated Gandhi all his life. It was called Young Winston which under-scored his patriotic thrust until Gandhi came. In 1993, he made Chaplin on the life and times of the great legend. It was unremarkable because it failed to capture the personality of the trump for the American audience - it was made more for the European audience. He made a cute film for book-lovers called Shadowlands and then cast Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist in Magic. As a creative, he took any role - cameo or meaty - under a galaxy of directors including Satyajit Ray, Shekar Kapur, Steven Spielberg, Preminger and Michael Anderson. If the British film industry became noted for what it is today, Lord Richard Attenborough has played a messianic role in its glow and its success. Of course, for Indians who watched his most endearing film paying less than one-twentieth of a pound for a ticket in the 1980s, the man will always be loved and remembered as Sir. But for Richard, Gandhi would have remained a dream for many. #RicharAttenborough #Gandhithefilm #Attenborough #moviereviews
Posted on: Mon, 25 Aug 2014 20:18:30 +0000
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