Gandhi (1982) on Netflix
PG19823h 11mBiographyDramaHistory
Mohandas Gandhi is put off a whites-only train carriage in Natal in 1893 and stays to campaign peacefully for Indian rights. In India, he presses for nonviolent resistance to British rule.
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Trailer
Plot summary
In 1893, Mohandas Gandhi is a lawyer traveling through the Colony of Natal when he is forced off a train carriage reserved for whites, though his ticket is valid. He remains in southern Africa and takes up the cause of Indians there, campaigning for their equality with whites. Dada Abdullah, who leads the Natal Indian Congress, notices his work and brings him to a gathering where Gandhi burns his pass. When the colonial authorities move to fingerprint Indians as if they were criminals, Gandhi answers with peaceful demonstrations and is jailed. Clergyman Charles Freer Andrews joins his mission, and the American journalist Vince Walker follows it. Gandhi returns to India in 1915, where Gopal Krishna Gokhale becomes his mentor and the Indian National Congress, among them Jawaharlal Nehru, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Sardar Patel, hears him argue for self-rule.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Gandhi (1982)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The funeral scene used over 300,000 extras, which Guinness World Records recognizes as the most ever used in a single film.
- Co-producer Rani Dube persuaded Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi to provide the first $10 million in funding from the National Film Development Corporation of India, which allowed the rest of the budget to be raised.
- Director Richard Attenborough spent 18 years trying to get the film made after Indian civil servant Motilal Kothari, a devout follower of Gandhi, approached him about it in 1962.
- David Lean and Sam Spiegel had planned to make a film about Gandhi after completing The Bridge on the River Kwai, reportedly with Alec Guinness as Gandhi, but the project was ultimately abandoned in favour of Lawrence of Arabia.
- During pre-production there was much speculation as to who would play the role of Gandhi; the choice was Ben Kingsley, who is partly of Indian heritage, his father Gujarati and his birth name Krishna Bhanji.
- Richard Grenier criticized the film in his 1983 article "The Gandhi Nobody Knows", also the title of his book on the same topic, arguing it misportrayed Gandhi as a "saint", and he alleged that the Indian government admitted to financing about a third of the film's budget.
