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Gandhi My Father PreviewWill Gandhi My Father live up to the play, Mahatma vs Gandhi, on which it was based? Shubir Rishi previews the movie.2 August , 2007 Coming soon to theaters near you is Gandhi My Father, a movie most of us reading this review would want to watch, but very few actually would. Mostly, the reason would be the lack of bollywood fanfare and masala. Surely, Attenbrough's Gandhi released twenty years ago was an epic, but it told the story of Gandhi the Mahatma, and little about his turbulent personal life. True, there is enough literature on the Mahatma; we all grew up reading about it in schools and colleges, held debates, and yes, cracked crude jokes too. But his personal life was rarely discussed. Hell, even his autobiography doesn't say much about his family, except for a few scattered tidbits. I had heard 'rumors' about his wayward son, and the troubled life he had led, but shrugged them off as rude, baseless facts. After all, it was very difficult to take on the Gandhi juggernaut that potrayed him as a uni-dimensional saint with no past, which is strictly not true. It was only after I actually saw the original play Mahatma Vs Gandhi I realized that after all, Gandhi was only human.
The original play had Naseeruddin Shah as Gandhi, and Kay Kay Menon (Honeymoon Travels India Ltd, Sarkar) as Harilal. Naseer was, as usual, superb. The Mahatma he represented was uptight, rigid, yet every bit disarming. The internal struggle to keep his feelings to himself is so strong and desperate, that he eventually ends up a wretched, forlorn man. All you want to do at that moment is to get up and hug him. So strong was the portrayal. Manilal, played by Menon, was equally spellbinding. His depiction of a soft-spoken, obedient son, turned into a drunken degenerate was equally heartbreaking. You actually felt for the son who is desperately seeking his father's attention and love, the latter being national property, and out of reach. A father with whom he could not share his ambitions, or his griefs. There were some particularly moving scenes; Manilal carrying an apple, and blabbering drunkenly in his bedridden mother's lap; the apple he begged for in her name, for he could not afford it; Manilal fighting with a group of Muslims, and getting bashed up badly, the arrival of news that the Mahatma has been assassinated, and the Muslims realizing it is the Mahatma's son they are thrashing, and leaving him.
I hadn't watched many English plays largely because I found it tiresome to follow the dialogues. But, when I watched Mahatma Vs. Gandhi, I was so completely engrossed in the play that I forgot that it was in English. The play left me shaken, and tearful in the end. The movie, Gandhi My father,
is based on the same play by Feroz
Abbas Khan. Says Khan, "For me to
direct this film meant that I would
not sacrifice the creative aspect for
the commercial ones.'
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