Oscar-winning biopic “Gandhi” gets a 4K UHD rework
- Bill Kelley III
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
4K ULTRA HD REVIEW / HDR SCREENSHOTS
(1) Ben Kingsley, in his breakout Academy Award-winning role as Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist, and political ethicist. Gandhi led a nonviolent resistance campaign for India’s independence from the British Empire. (2) His first nonviolent protest was in South Africa.
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“GANDHI”
4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray; 1982; PG for violence; Digital copy via Amazon Video (4K), Apple TV (4K), Fandango Home (4K), Movies Anywhere (4K), YouTube (4K)
Best extra: The 18-minute “Shooting an Epic in India” (2006)
MOST MODERN moviegoers remember actor/director Richard Attenborough as millionaire John Hammond, who built Jurassic Park, the so-called enclosed playground for DNA-created dinosaurs.
But a decade earlier in 1982, Attenborough directed the remarkable epic “Gandhi,” which won eight Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture.
“The movie is a labor of love by Sir Richard Attenborough,” says the late film critic Roger Ebert in his four-star review. For years, Attenborough struggled to get financing, with 20 years of delays and frustrations, to recreate the life of Mohandas Karamchand “Mahatma” Gandhi (1869-1948).
Stage actor Ben Kingsley (“Schindler’s List”) of Gujarati Indian descent from his father’s side and his mother an English actress became an international success with his Oscar-winning role.
“Kingsley’s performance is powerful without being loud or histrionic’ he is almost always quiet, observant, and soft-spoken on screen, and yet…comes across with such might that we realize, afterward, that the sheer moral force of Gandhi must have been behind the words,” Ebert says.
Assassination & Funeral – Mahatma Gandhi
(1&2) January 30, 1948, while walking to his evening prayer meeting in Delhi, Gandhi was killed by Nathuram Godse (Harsh Nayyar), a young Hindu fanatic. (3-5) Over 1 million joined the five-mile funeral procession in Delhi, with more than 250,000 extras used for the sequence. Martin Sheen plays American journalist Vince Walker, who was based on journalist Webb Miller.
EXTRAS
The new Sony Pictures Limited Edition Steelbook includes a bonus Blu-ray, which houses the majority of the extras, excluding the director’s commentary. The same disc was included in Sony’s first 4K release of “Gandhi” in the six-film Columbia Classics Collection: 4K Ultra HD Volume 1 (2020).
First, a 20-minute interview with Kingsley, who acknowledges Attenborough’s son Michael was the person who discovered him, playing Hamlet onstage. He suggested adding the actor to the short list, which included A-list actors Alec Guinness, Dirk Bogarde, Peter Finch, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay, Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, John Hurt, and Richard Burton.
Kingsley considers the opening after the funeral, the “backbone to the story,” showing that Gandhi has moved to South Africa as a young attorney, purchasing a First-Class train ticket. During the trip, he’s targeted with the country’s racial segregation code and thrown off the train. Gandhi’s reaction of peaceful nonviolence protest against the brutal and unchanging British Empire sets the tone for this formidable 188-minute film.
To prepare for the role, Kingsley shed weight, took up yoga, learned to spin cotton, and attempted to live like Gandhi.
Two interviews with Attenborough, who highlights the cast, reveals that at the time he still considered himself an actor. “I love actors and acting,” he says. He was considered one of British cinema’s top character actors during the 1950s and ‘60s. Plus, he played British Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett “Big X” in the World War II favorite “The Great Escape” (1963).
South African conflicts
Additional featurettes:
“Shooting an Epic in India” – Attenborough and Terence Clegg, in Charge of the Production, pinpoint the challenges of filming during the modest winter months in and around Delhi, then into the tropical climate of Bombay, and for the “back end of the movie” in Patna, where temperatures soared above 110 in the shade.
They also faced political pressure to “stop the movie” as many Indians felt “Gandhi” should’ve been filmed by an Indian production company with their own technicians. “Our greatest ally was Mrs. Gandhi herself, who knew Richard. Without her support, we never could have made the movie,” Clegg says. “She deflected all the political flak, which included demonstrations in the streets.”
“In Search of Gandhi” – Attenborough talks about the hurdles and roadblocks to getting the production started. He recalls seeing the first newsreel footage of Gandhi at a movie theater in the early 1930s. He had come to England for a conference dressed in his traditional dhoti and with a staff. The audience roared with laughter, mocking him, and my father said, “Son, don’t listen to these people. This is one of the great people of our age.”
“Looking Back” – the cast and crew remember its international success, even though its original rough-cut ran over four hours. “I felt it was an honest film, about one of the greatest figures… ever,” the director says. Even so, he had no idea it would be a commercial success. It was released just before Christmas in 1982 and finished its box office No. 14 the following year, just behind Sean Connery’s return as British agent 007 in “Never Say Never Again.”
“The Funeral” – the logistics of filming 250,000 plus extras, the most in film history, for Gandhi’s funeral, using 11 cameras.
“Madeleine Slade: An Englishwoman Abroad” – actress Geraldine James played Slade, one of Gandhi’s biggest followers. Attenborough initially considered the brilliant Judi Dench and Vanessa Redgrave for the role, but casting director Susie Figgis eventually warmed up to the idea of James, who was a close friend.
“Reflections of Ben” – the first Prime Minister of India Pandit Nehru categorically told Attenborough there were no Indian actors at the time who had the cinematic experience in the Western cinema style to play Gandhi. “I did test Ben, and he was so immediately acceptable.” Kingsley looked so much like Gandhi, and “he worked hard on it and did a brilliant job,” says actor Saeed Jaffrey, who plays Sardar Patel.
Attenborough’s commentary track is only available on the Blu-ray disc and digital platforms. First off, he gives credit to Motilal Kothari, the great Gandhian follower, who came to him with the idea of making this film. The assassination of Gandhi, which opens the film, was conducted by a Hindu, by his own race as it were and religion, but of the “far-right fanatics,” Attenborough says.
Return to India
VIDEO
Sony Pictures continues to release individual classics on 4K Ultra HD, originally part of its Columbia Classics series. The original camera negative (2.35:1 aspect ratio) captured with anamorphic Panavision lens was scanned some years ago, but for this Steelbook Edition, Sony provides new HDR10 grading and, for the first time, Dolby Vision.
Plus, they’ve expanded the 4K video encoding with a higher video bitrate level encoded onto two 100 GB discs. On average, the video runs between 15 Megabits per second to over 30 Mbps, more than the 2020 4K set, which were encoded onto 66 GB discs.
The added video bitrate provides a more defined cinematic film grain structure. And the HDR10 peak brightness is higher, from 3991 nits to 4627, with the average nit level adjusted from 240 to 344 nits. You’ll notice the highlights are brighter and, in some cases, maybe too bright.
Both 4K editions have exceptional clarity, from the wonderfully composed wide shots of the Indian landscape to the tight facial shots from Oscar-winning cinematographers Billy Williams and Ronnie Taylor. The color grading is the same on both 4K editions.
AUDIO
The previous Dolby Atmos soundtrack has been ported over. It’s quite livingly with composer Ravi Shankar’s Oscar-nominated score and effects. From the front speakers to the ones in the ceiling and rears, the soundstage is wide and encompassing. The 4K disc and Blu-ray include the 5.1 DTS HD track.
– Bill Kelley III, High-Def Watch producer
The Jallianwala Bagh Massacre & Protests
“Well, he [Mahatma Gandhi] has to be one of the great men of all time, because he changed our lives. He changed, certainly, the whole of the British Empire. But, he also changed our view, of how you actually confront violence and intolerance and injustice.” – Richard Attenborough, producer/director
