esrosedotblog

EPIC EPOCH

I was 11 years old when Gandhi was assassinated (1948).

I remember it pretty clearly. I was already a news junkie.

There was all kind of shit going on at the time. You think we live in a stirred up world now!

WWII was just over but the repercussions continued for a very long time. Palestine and Israel were happening. The "iron curtain". China split. All that.

History was on the move.

As successful as Ghandi was in achieving independence for India, it was a mixed blessing. He could not achieve unity between the Muslim and Hindu populations. The nation was split and huge migrations occurred from one land to the other. The Kashmir problems were set in stone. The trouble continues today at the atomic weapon level.

I remember we had to write a paper on Kashmir when we were in the 8th grade or something. It nearly killed me but I did it. Most of the class rebelled. Really.

It is hard, now, to see the film Gandhi as other than a tract or history lesson.

But, somehow, the story of the human being comes through this huge epic film that spans the man's whole adult life.

It is a fiver, for sure, on the Netflix5 scale.

Awesome in scale and intimate in human detail. Very hard to pull off.

Richard Attenborough does just that with a lot of help from Ben Kingsley who has had to claw his way out of being so identified with the role for life. You feel that he is the man he is portraying.