Gandhi – My Father

Let us call it snippets from the life of Gandhi and his son Harilal. The title suggests it is a son’s perspective on his iconic father. There is no evidence of that in the film.
 

If the idea was to juxtapose the lives of two diametrically opposite and contrasting characters from Indian history and exploit the great dramatic possibilities therein, it does not take off. It is a classic case of wasted human skill, energy, and cinematic opportunity.

Money can get you stars, expensive sets, hi-technology inputs, state-of-the-art equipment, research scholars, DVDs, publicists, musicians, singers, make-up artistes, costumers, production designers, and top-of-the-line technicians. It cannot inspire an integrated cinematic vision and may actually stunt intellectual and emotional growth, as you tend to buy your way to success. ‘Gandhi – My Father’ is a proof of that.

Who was Harilal? He was the eldest son of Mahatma Gandhi who could not pass the matric exam. He was a gullible scamster, an unreliable drunkard, and a man of easy virtues. He could change his religion for money. He died in a government hospital, unsung, unknown, and unidentified. This is what the film tells us. It also blames Gandhi for the harsh treatment of Harilal for his waywardness. This is the whole film. It explores nothing, neither the motives of the film’s protagonists nor the nuances of the father-son relationship.

The actors in the film have no material to work with. So they do the obvious. Darshan Jhaveri tries to look, walk, and talk like Ben K. Gandhi and Akshay Khanna uses Bollywood's histrionic references to build his character and thus turns Harilal into a clown. You cannot blame him though. He was the disadvantaged one. Darshan had Ben Kingsley to copy, Akshay had none. Shefali Shah plays a tragedy queen as usual, belaboring hard to present a depressing picture of an ever tormented, tortured, and weepy soul, with the tense and taut muscles of her face and big dollops of teardrops ever ready to flow out of her ultra large eyes. She needs to unlearn these cheap tricks of an actor’s trade and relax a bit. The other girl, Bhoomika Chawla, is just a showpiece as usual.

All father-son encounters begin and end up with the great Gandhi telling his idiot of a son to listen to the call of destiny. The son wants to become a barrister, even before completing his matriculation. The theme is repeated ludicrously. It gets boringly funny later when the father’s calls of destiny are reciprocated to by the son with a visit to a prostitute and conversion to Christianity and Islam. It is difficult to differentiate who is the joker in the pack – Mohandas or Harilal. I also felt like laughing at the way Darshan caricatures Gandhi. How can you take this Gandhi seriously? Let us credit Bollywood for turning the Mahatma into a comic figure and reinventing his philosophy as Gandhigiri. We should look forward to a David Dhavan film on Gandhi, with Rajpal Yadav in the lead.

The director pays greater attention to the elements of production design, instead of working with his actors and the script. It is typical of most of our filmmakers. While making a period piece, they forget that sets and props provide the backdrop to a film and if not handled carefully, can obfuscate its core theme and message. It is like creating a street scene to show a horse-drawn buggy and rickety dogs as period pieces.

The film also suffers from an overdose of research. The scriptwriter has unearthed some very important facets of Gandhi's lifestyle in South Africa. For example, Gandhi’s fondness for an overhead shower. He gets a makeshift shower constructed using gardening equipment, and takes bath while discussing his family affairs. Hats off to the genius who wrote the scene, and shirts off to the director who retained it to add that remarkable touch of chutiapatic authenticity to the film.

‘Gandhi – My Father’ is a pathetic ‘bioscope’ show. Dekho dekho tamasha dekho. Gandhi ka nahana dekho. Paani ka jahaaz dekho. South Africa dekho. Gujarati shaadi dekho, Gandhi ka cycle aur charkha chalana dekho. Gandhi ke matric phel bete Harilal ko dekho. Puraani buggy dekho aur car dekho, yeh kasturaba maiya ko dekho, ro rahin hain. Paisa phenko, tamasha dekho. Yeh angrezi zamana dekho, yeh bhaap wala engine dekho, gora dekho aur kaala dekho. Danga fassad dekho, hindu muslim bhai bhai dekho.

What a childish film on a presumably profound subject!

RKS

Note: Khullamkhulla film reviews are posted after the box office fate of the film is decided. This is because we feel that film making is a very challenging enterprise and whatever may be the artistic value of the film, its  producer should be allowed to recover whatever money he can after its release.

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