No sooner have I immersed myself in the murky waters of film rankings and pulled myself out than I find myself volunteering to dive right back in again. The reason - Richard Atennborough's seminal work, Ghandi.
This is a stately and properly sympathetic biopic about Mahatma Gandhi, whilst also giving the viewer a balanced overview of the sacred wonder and worry that is an independent India. It is masterful. But is it a great film? Ben Kingsley's central performance is magnificent, compelling even. I would say on a par with Peter O'Toole's tour de force in
Lawrence of Arabia, but the movie that contains it arguably falls just shy of the greatness of David Lean's masterpiece. Don't get me wrong,
Gandhi is, by a comfortable margin, a first class film but it is, perhaps, the undoubted saintliness of the central character that contains the germ of the film's slight defect. Lawrence was no saint and in his neuroses we have the stuff of great drama. So that leaves me perching on the edge of a designation of greatness for
Gandhi. In the final analysis the film leaves me awestruck but not anxious to see it again soon. 89/100.
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