‘Essay on Gandhi (1982)’ 

Anil Kumar, Film scholar,
Kerala central university.

Gandhi was released in India on 30th November 1982. it was praised for a historically accurate portrayal of the life of Gandhi, the Indian independence movement and the deteriorating results of colonisation on India, and also for Kingsley's performance, its production values and costume design. it became a commercial success, grossing 127.8 million dollars on a 22 million dollar budget.

It is directed and produced by Richard Attenborough from a screenplay written by John Briley. it stars Ben Kingsley in the title role. A co-production between India and the united kingdom. the film opens with Gandhi's life from a defining moment in 1893, as he is thrown off from a South African train for being in a whites-only compartment, and concludes with his assassination and funerals in 1948.

The film received a leading eleven nominations at the 55th academy awards, winning eight. the British film institute ranked Gandhi as the 34th greatest British film of the 20th century. on the mise-en-scene aspects, this film made its mark as a living, original and attracted the audience not only in the 20th century but also in the 21st century. Let's talk about some of the aspects of mise-en-scene in the film Gandhi.

Aspects of Mise-En-Scene:-

1. Setting: - Exciting sequences will be the burning of the chauri chaura police station, dandi march, the staging of a 1916 INC, and surging crowds of half a million on Rajpath following Gandhi's funeral cortege. sets have carefully abbreviated a village with green vegetable patches, a fully-equipped Gujarati kitchen and the dusty, faint brown silhouette of Ahmedabad town, chimneys and trees, perfectly proportioned to merge into the natural backdrop.
2. Lighting: - The whole movie was shot in Panavision to reflect the historical film. A unique new gadget called the louma crane, of which only five exist in the world is being used for the first time in India. the shot at the railway station after being Gandhi thrown off from the first-class compartment was perfectly pictured by the lights.
3. Acting: - Kingsley, 36, whose grandfather was Indian, he tries to emulate Gandhi's simple life. he tries to show Gandhi in various postures, smiling, thinking and sitting at his spinning wheel. he showed Gandhi's spirit on the screen. Co-actors Nehru, Jinnah, Sardar and all others gave a feel of the Indian freedom struggle.
4. Set props: - the view along the river is of a long, low-slung verandah, stone-floored and austere, a white mattress, a low writing desk,  stool, a spittoon exactly like the one Gandhi used, reed pens, a threadbare pincushion, and in fact all the minutiae of Gandhi's ashram as it exists. the correct kitchen utensils of the time and old bullock-cart.
5. Hand props/Action props: - When Nehru comes to visit Gandhi for the first time, Gandhi himself is peeling potatoes under a tree, later feeding the peels to a goat.
6. Costume: - This film includes western-style men's suits of the period 1900-1940 to represent the same period. ladies used gloves and handbags, the hatpin of the time. footwear, military and police uniforms of the British Indian army were perfectly represented the periodic drama. it made the film living in the ages.
7. Makeup: - Gandhi, Sardar Patel and even Nehru progress from smartly-cut three-piece suits and hats to home-spun, receding hairlines, sagging muscles, altered gaits - all of this has to be meticulously recorded. Gandhi alone changes hairstyles 11 times during the movie.

All of this made film rich in all the diversities and attracted crowds and awards throughout the world. though it has been criticized for truncation of events, depictions of towering real-world figures and omissions of both historical and human scale, Gandhi succeeds in a film.