Gandhi

Richard Attenborough spent 18 years trying to get this made. The first 10 million dollars came from India’s National Film Development Corporation after Rani Dube persuaded Indira Gandhi to back it, and the main objection points the same way: the historian Lawrence James called the portrait pure hagiography. Numbers describe the crowd work. For the funeral sequence the production engaged 94,560 contracted performers, more than 200,000 volunteers turned out, 11 camera crews rolled, and all of it yielded 125 seconds on screen. Guinness records it as the largest number of extras used in a film. The narrative opens on the assassination of 1948, then goes back to 1893. You watch knowing the outcome, so the interest is held by method rather than by event. Ben Kingsley, cast in the lead, was born Krishna Bhanji to a Gujarati father. Of 11 Academy Award nominations, 8 were won: picture, director, actor, original screenplay, cinematography, art direction, costume design and editing. The three that got away were original score, sound and makeup. A good fit if you want a political method assembled step by step and accept the mass scenes crowding out the inner life of the man. Not for anyone who wants Gandhi handled as a contestable politician; the portrait is built to elevate him from the first reel.