Gandhi (Movie) Essay example

Gandhi is a 1982 film based on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s life events. Responding to challenge has many different outcomes. Some respond peacefully and some respond with violence. Violence should never be the answer.Throughout the film Gandhi, watchers realize that Gandhi only wants peace. He wants to fight back but with no violence. Throughout the film, the director's shows the idea of manners through Gandhi’s actions.

The movie Gandhi starts in 1893, where Gandhi was riding in a first class train carriage but was told to transfer into the third-class carriage, even though he was holding a first class ticket. Gandhi refused to move to a different carriage, so a policeman arrived and literally threw him out of the train. This was the defining moment of Gandhi that changed his life forever: he would dedicate his life to fight for equality and independence for his people the Indians, nonviolently.

Gandhi is a biopic produced by Richard Attenborough whose lifelong dream was to make the story of the national independence leader’s life into a movie. The movie starts with Mohandas K. Gandhi, played by actor Ben Kingsley, rejecting all material possessions in pursuit of India’s independence. The storyline plays out to highlight important aspect of Gandhi’s life and ends with his assassination, where he utters the famous lines “Oh god.” Critics claim the movie is over exaggerated, however Attenborough does a fine job of bringing a visual of Gandhi’s life into Western eyes. In addition, what could be a bad thing ends up being a good thing for the layman who watches this movie. Attenborough oversimplifies Gandhi’s perspectives and ideas on social justice and religion, which leads to a very simple explanation of Gandhi’s philosophy.

Mohandas Gandhi was born in 1869 in the Indian coastal city of Porbandar (Background Essay). He then studied law in London, where he noticed that Indians were expected to imitate their rulers, the Englishmen (Background Essay). Gandhi wanted all people to live free, even those imposed by India’s caste system so he decided to take action in a peaceful manner (Background Essay). By doing so he was able to gain India’s independence in 1947 (Background Essay). This caused Gandhi to be known as “ Mahatma” or “ Great Soul” because he was able to do it without violence (Background Essay). Gandhi’s nonviolent movement worked because he accepted the consequences to his actions, strived for fairness to all mankind, and didn’t think of the British as enemies.

In South Africa Gandhi was exposed to a level of racism that he had never experienced before. He was not allowed to wear his turban in a courtroom and he was not allowed to ride in the same cars as Europeans on the trains. While traveling to by train to Pretoria, he was asked to leave his seat for the van compartment. He refused and was kicked off the train.8 To get to his destination, he found a stagecoach going to Pretoria. He was not allowed to sit in the coach-box with the white passengers, but was forced to sit with the coachman. Later, he was asked to give up his seat to sit on the floorboard. Gandhi would not agree to this injustice. And, although he received a beating for it, he remained in his seat.9 These incidents led Gandhi to decide to fight for the rights of Indian workers in South Africa.

When Gandhi arrived in South Africa, he was appalled and disgusted with the way Indians were being treated. Not being allowed to gain citizenship as an immigrant and being thought of as a third class citizen. In the courtroom, he was asked if he could

Difficult days still lay ahead. Gandhi and his supporters would launch more protests in the 1930s and 40s and endure even more stints behind bars, and Indian independence would have to wait until 1947—only months before Gandhi was shot dead by a militant Hindu. But while the immediate political results of the Salt March were relatively minor, Gandhi’s satyagraha had nevertheless succeeded in his goal of “shaking the foundations of the British Empire.” The trek to the sea had galvanized Indian resistance to the Raj, and its international coverage had introduced the world to Gandhi and his followers’ astonishing commitment to nonviolence. Among others, Martin Luther King Jr. would later cite the Salt March as a crucial influence on his own philosophy

A new way of protesting came to be during the life of Mahatma Gandhi. A peaceful protest without the need for violence. Gandhi set out to combat discrimination and help his home country of India liberate from British rule. The British were forcibly denying rights to Muslims and Indians and even establishing a law for arresting them without plausible cause. Gandhi also experienced discrimination first-hand when he forcibly got thrown off a train after refusing to give up his seat for a white European. Getting thrown of the train led to his enlightenment after discovering how people of his race were being treated. Gandhi changed the course of his life. He planned to organize protests, marches, and even hunger strikes to combat the injustice Indians encountered every day. Gandhi’s rebellion against the British government through non-violent protest inspired social justice movements ranging from Nelson Mandela’s and to today’s Black Lives Matter movement.

At this time, are nominated leaders with ideological organizational talent, which indicate the strategy and goals of struggle and turn disgruntled masses in effective social movement. Also in the film there is a leader whose name is V. He is a man who does not agree with the policies of the current regime and wants to destroy it. At the beginning of his revolutionary actions he met inconspicuous employee of the British television, Evey. V was destined to become a person that has radically changed her outlook. And after it - to change the outlook of thousands, millions of people - to open their eyes to the

Even though “[n]o man's life can be encompassed in one telling” as stated in the beginning Gandhi, director Richard Attenborough has succeeded in showing an incredible epic of a man determined to live and promote non-violence. (Gandhi) This film helps to capture the essence of Gandhi by using a wide range of critical scenes spanning his adult life. Gandhi should be used as a guide to living a modern day non-violent life. Gandhi’s actions, in this film, can be used as a case study for understanding how non-violent protest is a functional and moral way to combat oppression.

Gandhi strongly believed in equality of race, religion, gender, etc. He grew up practicing not to be violent and to be respectful towards all religions. What sparked his desire to become an activist for peaceful protesting was when he was forced out of a train for refusing to move from where he was seated. Gandhi was then known as an “outspoken critic” for the discrimination in South Africa. He was put in jail multiple times, but would continue protesting after each release. After being released for refusal of the Indian registration law, he organized a nonviolent march, later partially ending the registration law. Returning to India in 1914, Gandhi tried to help against “three great evils” that oppressed India. They were; British rule, Hindu-Muslim disunity, and the classification of Indians as “untouchables” who were the lowest social class. When chaos surfaced after India and Muslim Pakistan agreed on Hindu dominance, Gandhi took drastic measures. He protested by fasting until there was peace between the Hindus and Muslims. In the end what Gandhi did was effective, the leaders pledged peace. With the help of all Gandhi’s non-violent actions, change in South Africa, India, and Pakistan took place (Gandhi and Civil

After watching the movie and seeing what Gandhi did to help and to inspire others really made me think and I realized that Gandhi started out as just a normal man that was a lawyer but a man who inspired people to stand up for themselves, not to fight back but to take it and show that they weren’t backing down. Gandhi helped people and then lived like the people including wearing their simple clothes and doing the chores to show that he was one of them and was willing to help.Gandhi inspired the people to march for the right to make their own salt and to show an act of disobedience from the British. Gandhi also leads the Indian’s on a march for the coal miners.

The 1982 movie Gandhi, starring Ben Kingsley and Candice Bergen had both strengths and weaknesses. One of the movies weaknesses was that it left a lot of gaps. It is understandable why they had to leave a lot of gaps. The movie was supposed to depict the whole life of Gandhi. If they had of put every detail of Gandhi’s life, every year of every sentence he spent in jail, the movie would be way longer than three plus hours. I just think that they could have better picked and chosen which parts to leave out because at times it left you confused, which leads me to my next weakness. At times it was hard to understand what exactly was going on. As a person who is not as familiar with Gandhi and what exactly he stood for, it was very hard to

Gandhi returned to India as he lived a normal life for a little bit as he was becoming a bigger figure in Indian Politics. When WWI in came around the corner India and Gandhi were supporting Britain until he decided to satyagraha them in protest of the mandatory military draft of Indians. Thousand’s of people answered the call of this new protest idea as he was asserting unity to christian and muslims with his Hindu teachings. During this time he was jailed multiple times by the British Government, but was released every time due to all of his followers. Not only did Gandhi change and stand up for his rights, but he is the most persistent non-violent protester there ever was.

As mentioned before, there are some alterations to the actual story of the movie along with some factual errors presented in the movie. The story of the movie, as the name suggests, is about Gandhi the political leader. To narrow down further, the director of the movie is looking only at the political aspect of Gandhi. Here other aspects life the social life, moral life and religious aspects are omitted. These aspects about Gandhi are also important while talking about the story of Gandhi the person. Talking about the story of Gandhi-the movie, the time-line starts with Gandhi 's youth and days he worked as a lawyer in South Africa. Therefore the director is not mentioning anything about the childhood and teenage of Gandhi or his family background. It is not a complete biographical movie as it is neglecting the initial years of the protagonist, in its narration. The plot can be easily distinguished from the story of the movie. The plot of the movie begins with the final moments in Gandhi 's life. The movie begins with the shot where Godse approaches Gandhi and kills him. Then the story flashes back to 55 years. It shows how a 23 year old Gandhi is facing racial discrimination during a train journey (1893-South Africa). Most of the scenes shown in the movie is part of this flash back. The jump from