A Man Dressed in a Sheet

Early evening on January 30, 1948, a frail old man was aided by two young girls out of an affluent house in India into a spacious garden where a crowd was waiting. The man, wearing loincloth and a shawl, the clothing of the lowest Indians, was Mahatma Gandhi; the house was his friend's. Babu (Hindu for father), as Gandhi had come to be called by his countrymen, was to lead a public prayer. But before the ceremony could start, an assassin popped bullets into the small brown fellow's abdomen and leg. He died a few minutes later.

Again in 1982, thirty four years later, the very same incident was seen, this time not only by those present in the garden of New Delhi's Birla Mansion but by millions of others around the world, as well. The movie Gandhi opened in jam-packed theaters everywhere, quickly taking in US$38 million at the American box office alone. The figure, in those days, was already way past half the usual worldwide earning of an average film.

Being able to attract such a huge initial audience was a remarkable feat, indeed, especially at a time when the cinematic technology was yet not as advanced. Gandhi does not have the eye-popping special effects that are common attractions in movies today. All it has is a story of a remarkable man, told with simple artistic brilliance and strict truthfulness.

Simplicity and truth, indeed, are very much the marks of the man himself. In the words of Gen. George C. Marshall, the American secretary of state at the time of Gandhi's death: "Mahatma Gandhi has become the spokesperson for the consciousness of all mankind. He was a man who made humility and simple truth more powerful than empires."

Sir Richard Attenborough, a successful British character actor and director, was obsessed with making a film about Gandhi. "I'm excited by this man's life, what he stands for," he told a reporter in 1966. His fascination about Gandhi's dogged sense of conviction and adherence to nonviolence inspired Attenborough to immortalize the man on film.

But the box-office failure of an earlier film about Gandhi's assassination had scared away investors and made money hard to raise for another movie on the Mahatma (Hindu for Great Soul). Attenborough said the major studios were "not interested about a man dressed in a sheet." Over the succeeding years, he looked everywhere else for financing.

Fearing that other professional commitments might mean "giving up Gandhi forever," Attenborough turned down 40 acting roles and a dozen directing jobs in order to pursue his goal. He even declined to become associate director of Britain's National Theatre. Finally, money came in from sources outside the mainstream film industry. By early 1981, with money pooled in by International Film Investors, National Film Development Corporation of India, Goldcrest Films International, and Indo-British Film Limited, Attenborough was in Bombay directing his epic.

Two weeks prior to that fateful day in 1948, Gandhi was fasting to protest the riot killings that followed his country's split into Hindu India and Moslem Pakistan. The ageing advocate of a free and unified nation had fasted several times before. It was in the same way that he gained India's independence from Britain. When the prized freedom for which he betted his life incited hatred instead of love among his countrymen, Gandhi was once again prepared to starve to his death.

People were holding vigil outside the Birla Mansion where the old man was fasting. Inside, civilian leaders pleaded with him to end his fast. A fellow Hindu approached the weakening Mahatma to confess a great wrong. "I'm going to hell… I killed a child," he said. "I smashed his head against a wall." "Why?" asked Gandhi.

The distraught man broke down, "They killed my boy! The Moslems killed my son!" "I know a way out of hell," said Gandhi calmly. "Find a child, a little boy whose mother and father have been killed, and raise him as your own." Before the man could turn away Gandhi added, "Only be sure he is a Moslem-and that you raise him as one."

The guilt-burdened father fell to his knees, weeping at Gandhi's feet, realizing the Mahatma's great wisdom.

In three hours and eight minutes Gandhi covers half a century of the life of the "nonviolent resistance" leader. Ben Kingsley, a veteran of England's Shakespeare Company, plays Gandhi. The story begins in 1893 when, as a 25-year-old London-educated lawyer, Gandhi is thrown out of a first-class railway compartment in South Africa. It ends in 1948 when he is assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.

The movie explores Gandhi's life in stirring detail and in a most breathtaking, unforgettable way. In one scene he relates succinctly a profound philosophical view: "When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible-but in the end they always fall. Always."

When Attenborough showed his finished Gandhi to major film distributors in Los Angeles, "every company that had turned it down over the past 20 years now wanted it." Especially after the Oscar night, he had to choose carefully whom to entrust his film with among the so many who wanted to carry it. With eight Oscars to its credit, including Best Director for Attenborough, Best Actor for Kingsley and Best Picture of 1982, Gandhi became, according to critics, a film "not to be missed."

Gandhi is a great movie because it is about a great character, a man who stands for something bigger than himself. That something is good values. All films that have been widely honored, critically acclaimed and financially successful are about universal values that reflect the basic goodness in people: hard work, self-respect, love of country, family, friends, community and God. In an age when so many films show mindless violence and sex without intimacy, the public is hungry for good movies that sell neither. Today's pointless, gory, lewd flicks are like soap bubbles, comely but empty, and very short-lived. They can't stay long because they soon make their viewers feel sick, debased and hopeless. You can't sell insults and hopelessness. No one will buy it. Not because people know it won't do them any good in the long term, but because they can get that stuff everywhere for free.

Great movies give us hope. They tell us that ordinary individuals are capable of extraordinary acts. And we keep coming back to hear that message, again and again. That's why great movies last-way outlasting their makers-because people like to keep going back to that promontory with a good view of the sea of life.

Gandhi is a portrait of the heart and soul of the man dressed in a sheet, whose humility was his greatness, whose peace his weapon. Its story is timeless, as relevant today as in Gandhi's own lifetime and certainly in the times yet to come.