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Gandhi (1982)
Director: Richard Attenborough
Country: United Kingdom / India
Length: 191 minutes
Type: Historical, Epic
'Gandhi' is just about the definition of the "historical epic", featuring vast crowd scenes numbering as many as 300,000 people in one shot, a runtime over 3-hours (but never feels it), a story spanning 5-decades and a huge cast of famous actors in big and small roles. The writing, editing and directing seem to dramatise Gandhi's whole life with out any obvious effort (far from the truth I'm sure), while also portraying his philosophy and giving you rounded depictions of many of the real people he knew and campaigned with. The storytelling touch is so light and skilful, full of drama and pain but humour and beauty too. The central cast of Indian change-makers and their political and moral debates are the most exciting part of the film, played by Ben Kingsley in the brilliant title performance, Rohini Hattangadi as Ghandi's faithful wife, Roshan Seth as Nehru, a twinkle-eyed Saeed Jaffrey and Alyque Padamsee as a proud Jinnah. Plus the supporting cast of venerable British thespians like Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Ian Charleson, Richard Griffiths, Nigel Hawthorne and Michael Hordern. Blink and you might miss a very young Daniel Day-Lewis in his first speaking role. Ravi Shankar and George Fenton (a much unvalued film composer in my opinion) deliver a terrific score, bringing together the best of Indian classical music and traditional orchestral film music. I doubt I'd ever get tired of re-watching 'Ghandi'.
Who needs CGI for crowd scenes when you've got this many extras!