Gandhi My Father: Brave attempt

Syed Firdaus Ashraf | August 03, 2007 15:47 IST


A still from Gandhi My Father









With Gandhi My Father Anil Kapoor, has touched a subject that no Bollywood producer would have dared to.

The film is a brave attempt and director Feroz Abbas Khan has tried to bring out the complicated relationship between the Father of the Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and his eldest son, Harilal.

The film works because of the wonderful performances from the four lead actors: Darshan Jariwala as Mahatma Gandhi [Images], Akshaye Khanna as Harilal, Shefali Shah as Kasturba Gandhi [Images] and Bhoomika Chawla as Harilal's wife Gulab.

Unfortunately, the script has many loopholes. A little more research on what the real problem between Mahatma and his son was would have made this film a classic. It is here that Feroz Abbas Khan disappoints.

To begin with, there was no justification for Gandhi opposing Harilal's decision to get married. Again, a little research on the reason behind Harilal's rebellion against his father could have taken the film to another level.

Another inconsistency is the part where the Mahatma advocates Indian students to go to London [Images] for a scholarship but when it comes to his own son, he sticks to Satyagraha and Indian values.

More questions come to the fore as the film progresses and no reason is given for the growing distance between father and son, though there are enough about the Mahatma being more concerned about the nation's interest than his family.

The film also fails to explore the relationship between Gandhi and his other three children -- Manilal, Ramdas and Devdas -- and how they felt about their father's apparent abandonment of family responsibilities. Their relationship vis-a-vis Harilal is also left unexplored. What the script is more concerned about is the fact that both Gandhi and Harilal were right in their own ways.

Akshaye Khanna [Images] as Harilal is outstanding and his performance will tear you up, especially the part where he goes to meet his parents at a railway station. He gives his mother an orange but refuses to share it with his father, stating that Mahatma Gandhi is the Mahatma because of her.

Shefali Shah is brilliant as Kasturba. Her helplessness at her failure to bridge the growing gap between father and son is palpable. The scene where she goes to meet Harilal, who has converted to Islam, is commendable for her composed dialogue delivery.

The same holds true for Bhoomika Chawla [Images], who shines in the role of Gulab.

Darshan Jariwala, as the younger Gandhi, is not convincing. But in the later part of the movie, he begins to resemble the Father of the Nation more. The chemistry between him and Akshaye is exceptionally good.

The attention to detail -- in terms of sets and costumes -- is also commendable.

Overall, the film has its share of gut-wrenching moments at the plight of a son with 'Gandhi' attached to his name. The film is worth a watch for its brave attempt to paint another picture of the Mahatma, not found in our history books.

Rediff Rating:


3/5

Just returned from watching the film and I must say it is a very commendable effort. Not only are the performances of all the lead characters, award worthy, but even technically the film is very good. The sets, costumes, locations are all very good, specially considering that it is a Bollywood production. My hats off to Anil Kapoor for having the courage to produce the film. He specially deserves comendation considering his Bollywood background and the crap that his brother Boney Kapoor produces, Mr. India not included.

PS: Personally I feel that everyone should watch this movie in the theater to encourage good films. It would really be a shame if this movie does not do well. For once Bollywood actually has a product that has potential in the mainstream (art circuit) western markets and I hope the film is properly marketed and promoted in those markets.

This is really an overpowering film, heavily infulenced by Citizen Kane, Feroze Abbas Khan brings magic to the films narrative structure with detailed handeling of editing, photography, makeup, and the well verved performances. Without siding with any one particular view, Khan's depiction of the father and son relationshhip is a mere complex one, where downfall of their social structure is inevitable. I'm very tempted to make this my favourite film this year thus far(along aside, Anwar) since it's currently got such a strong hold on me, there both really a devastating piece of cinema.

http://desipundit.com/baradwajrangan/20 ... my-father/

Review: Gandhi My Father
Posted in Hindi Film Review | Saturday, August 4th, 2007

FODDER AND SON
There’s plenty of raw material in the story of Mahatma Gandhi’s firstborn, but the finished product is a big disappointment.

AUG 5, 2007 - IT’S NEVER A GOOD SIGN in a movie – made with much passion, much commitment, and many, many good intentions – when your thoughts upon exiting the theatre centre on the wigmakers and the hairdressers, but that’s all I could remember from Feroz Abbas Khan’s Gandhi My Father. There’s Harilal Gandhi (Akshaye Khanna, as the son of the more famous Gandhi, very nicely played by Darshan Jariwala) in his younger days, with a dashing fringe flapping over part of his forehead. There he is upon his conversion to Islam, with an intimidatingly lengthy beard – one that’s all the more conspicuous due to the absence of a complementary moustache. There he is in his later days, a bedraggled beggar with filthy, matted hair covering apparently everything except his eyes.

But for all these physical transformations of a shadowy son forever eclipsed by a famous father, I came away with practically no insights into his emotional journey. The glacially-paced narrative – even the fade-ins and the fade-outs that punctuate the scenes appear to take twice as much time as usual – revolves around a powerful central irony, that the man who became father to an entire nation couldn’t be a father to his own son. (The film comes off remarkably like a Raj-era Long Day’s Journey into Night, which was also about a son trying to follow in his father’s footsteps, failing, and ending up a pitiful drunk. Alternately, you could think of the self-destructive father-son dynamic in Shakti.) In other words, Gandhi My Father attempts to treat the life of the Gandhis as a dysfunctional family drama – a fine idea in theory. Unfortunately, while there’s a lot of dysfunction, there’s very little memorable drama.

Scene after scene sets up what should have been seeds for powerful conflict – if not literally (that is, physically), at least in abstract, dramatic terms. Early on, Harilal’s wife Gulab (Bhumika Chawla) packs him off to South Africa – despite her staying back in India, despite her being pregnant – because, “Bapu ko aapki zaroorat hai.” And after this sacrifice on his family’s part, how did Harilal feel when his father did not even come to the station to receive him? His reactions are dismissed with alarming casualness in a conversation that his mother Kasturba (Shefali Shah, swaying impressively between loyalty to her husband and love for her son) has with his father, and even then, it’s never really clear why Gandhi Sr. is so disapproving of his son.

One thing that the film does manage – and this is no mean feat, considering how fearful of sacred cows our filmmaking culture usually is – is to strip at least a few coats of whitewash off the Mahatma. When Bapu is leaving South Africa for good, the white-man speaking at his farewell remarks that the guest of honour isn’t, as people seem to think, a saint who strayed into politics so much as a politician trying to become a saint – and I was reminded of Pauline Kael’s scathing review of Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, where she remarked that Bapu had a “manipulative genius,” and that he employed “the same diabolic tricks as the Jewish mothers that TV comics complain about.” You could fashion a similar argument from this film, from the scene in court where Harilal happily accepts a prison sentence for civil disobedience; you could say that his father’s brainwashing – which is merely another word for “manipulation” – has been completely successful.

Far more shocking is the hypocrisy apparently inherent in Bapu’s address about the need to make untouchables a part of society – this, after he’s publicly denounced his son (and, therefore, practically made him an untouchable in the eyes of the millions who slavishly follow the Mahatma’s every word.) And after this, when Harilal becomes destitute and drops off the face of decent society, the director slyly tucks in a shot of the senior Gandhi’s “imprisonment” at the Aga Khan palace, winking at the fact that even in his worst moments, life treated the father a great deal better than it did the son. So the problem with Gandhi My Father – a film that actually has the cheek to show us the Mahatma soaping up under a makeshift shower – isn’t that it doesn’t go out on a limb.

It’s that it doesn’t extend the same consideration to Harilal’s character. There’s a lot about the elder Gandhi here, and even if there’s an equal amount that’s left out, we know enough about the man to fill in the gaps for ourselves. But that’s hardly the case with Harilal – unless you’ve read Chandulal Bhagubhai Dalal’s Harilal Gandhi: A Life, on which this film is based. How did it feel, for instance, to be ticked off about even something as minor as your choice of light reading? (Gandhi Sr. takes in Harilal’s copy of Saraswatichandra and remarks that his time would be better spent poring over the autobiographies of great men.) What, other than storming off in a huff, was Harilal’s reaction to being denied a coveted scholarship to study in England, when his father picked someone else for the honour? (And, of course, it never occurred to Bapu that he was doing his son a disservice, because according to him, “Is basti ka har ek bachcha hamara bachcha hai.” Harilal was merely one among those many children.)

But, most bafflingly, what are the reasons behind the on-again-off-again relationship between father and son? One minute Harilal rushes to touch his father’s feet; the next, he can’t bring himself to look at the man. (This scene, at a railway station, is Akshaye Khanna’s finest moment; he registers beautifully the childish obstinacy that makes people believe that if they ignore a problem it will somehow go away. It’s just too bad that the actor’s fine efforts are otherwise hemmed in by a script that keeps drifting off towards the other Gandhi.) By the end, watching Gandhi My Father feels like reading every alternate page of a novel; with its sudden transitions across time and place, mood and emotion, you don’t quite get the sense of having grasped all there is to grasp about the story and the characters. And that’s a shame, really. This little-known man – who failed in his studies, who failed in his business, who failed to keep his family together – continues his losing streak, failing to come alive in what would seem his best shot at being remembered by posterity. It’s his story, and he’s still playing second fiddle to his famous father.

Copyright ©2007 The New Sunday Express

I'll be seeing this one soon. I'm glad they've made a film about Gandhi's first son, which alot of Gandhi supporters have been trying to hide for many years. I heard there were protests over this film. Imagine the protests if they make a film about Gandhi's assassin?