Gandhi, My Father
leaves you disappointed on many fronts. The
film, looking at the stormy relationship between
Mahatma Gandhi and his son Harilal Gandhi from
1906 to 1948, had the potential of being great
- tackling a side of Gandhiji not seen - Gandhi,
the father, the human being as against Gandhi
the saint, the father of a nation. While the effort
is sincere and there are some moments of brilliance
with great performances and you are more than
grateful that an attempt is being made to make
a different, sensible film; the film ultimately
fails to move you.
 Slow
moving and tedious, Gandhi, My Father
comes across as a series of incidents and events
strung together, giving it an episodic feel and
an uneven flow. Consequently the film is unable
to explore the father-son relationship convincingly
and lacks that psychological layer to understand
the characters better and give it the required
depth. In particular, it is Harilal's character
that suffers. The film is called Gandhi, My
Father and should have been an exploration
from Harilal's point of view but since he blamed
his father for all his disappointments in life,
the film could have shown Gandhi in more negative
light so it appears the filmmakers have tried
to balance out the film by keeping the viewpoint
totally neutral by juxtaposing Gandhi against
the freedom movement much more then necessary
thus weakening the main focus of the film. Harilal's
character seems to lack a coherent graph especially
since you see him often after passages of time,
you are unable to undertsand his actions as the
cause of them have not been built up sufficiently.
For example his outburst at the Ramleela sequence.
Or him trying to get out of South Africa using
forged documents. This comes out of the blue without
any build up whatsoever. Or his conversion to
Islam: was it an impulsive rebellious decision
or was it due to something else? Many questions
remain unanswered.
Even though the film's focus is the relationship
between Gandhi and Harilal, a lack of Gandhi's
interaction with his other children leaves a gaping
hole in his character. Would not be interesting
to see how the other children towed his line of
treatment? Barring seeing them in an early scene
in South Africa, it is as if they do not exist.
We don't even know the relationship between Harilal
and his siblings to see how did the others view
him and their father. Even separate scenes were
not necessary and could easily have been incorporated
with the structure of the screenplay. Hence we
get a frustratingly incomplete picture of Gandhi,
the father.
Given that this is an adaptation to screen, the
potential is there to explore and open up from
the play Mahatma v/s Gandhi (itself based
on Chandulal Dalal's novel) and by opening up
one doesn't just mean more physical locations.
And while the film has been shot all over from
South Africa to Ahmedabad to Pune, few scenes
have depth beyond a point of what they are trying
to express. One rare such small scene is when
Harilal hurts himself playing soccer in South
Africa. Even as Gandhi attends to his physical
wounds, he tells Harilal he is giving the scholarship
to study in England to someone else thus hurting
Harilal more.
 The
film lacks a strong cinematic language and the
material as it is has in fact not translated very
well to screen. Many of the scenes, good as they
might be, lack a proper entry and exit point.
Transitions between scenes, so important in cinema
for a smooth flow of the story, have not been
worked out with the film having to resort a continual
series of fade ins and fade outs to show passage
of time. Dialogues are often informative in the
worse sense of commercial Hindi cinema. Scenes
of Gandhi asking Harilal to come with him get
repitive while some scenes like the one where
the businessmen use Harilal or Harilal and his
drunken friends picked up by the police or Harilal's
scene with the prostitute (what was that sleazy
shot introducing this scene?) are cringeworthy
to say the least. Scenes that work are include
the one when Harilal arrives in South Africa and
Kasturba asks Gandhi why didn't he go to recieve
him. Harilal had been looking for him: it's a
summation of the relationship between father and
son. Harilal would continue his entire life to
search his 'father', someone a tea stall owner
claims as his own when he is assasinated. Gandhi
transcends family, and belongs the nation.
More moments that the film captures quite well
include Harilal's meeting with his parents at
the station where he gives his mother the orange
ignoring his father and when he comes to her at
Aga Khan Palace where she realizes he has been
drinking and asks him to leave.
What lifts the film several notches are the four
central performances. In spite of being handicapped
with a sketchy role, Akshaye Khanna manages to
breathe some life into Harilal's role. True at
times, the script defeats him and we are unable
to understand his behaviour but Akshaye captures
the frustration, anger, helplessness and angst
of Harilal's life perfectly as he degenerates
into becoming an alcoholic weighed down by the
Gandhi name. Darshan Jariwala, to his credit,
does try his own unique interpretation of a famous
role. Shefali Shah is good as always as the woman
caught between the two men. Hers is the more internal
role as she silently suffers seeing what Harilal
goes through. She makes the most of her two key
scenes where she turns on Gandhi for not giving
Harilal the scholarship and where she confronts
Harilal after he has converted. Her death scene
however loses its impact with poor make up. Bhumika
as Gulab is efficient, leaving her mark particularly
in the scene where she feels he is going astray.
Technically the film is middling. Compared to
most Indian films, Nitin Chandrakant Desai's production
design and recreation of the period is a good
effort. The camerawork by David MacDonald who
has shot for Ridley and Tony Scott is great in
places and adequate in others. The framing - in
particular the close ups - are too centrally composed,
highlighting the difficulty of working in the
cinemascope format. The sound design by Resul
Pookutty is efficient enough though one is rather
disturbed by the low level and fluctuating levels
of the dialogue track in many places. The editing
looks inconsistent at times holding on to scenes
too long or at times cutting them too early (the
scene where Gandhi gets down alone at the station
after meeting Harilal inside the train alone is
a truly nice moment that could have been allowed
to linger on) but here one can only say that the
editor has fixed material to go by and Sreekar
Prasad is an extremely experienced editor. Penny
Smith's make up for Jariwala and Shefali Shah
over the years deserves a mention as in the ageing
process, even if Shefali's make up towards the
end is a little obvious. But how is it that Harilal
and Gulab, in particular, hardly age throughout
the course of the film? How old were they when
introduced in 1906? And even if Gulab died young,
surely there would have been some maturity on
her face and body considering the life she had
with Harilal and having given birth to 4 childen.
And what is with our films that we can never get
realistic enough wigs and moustaches? Background
music is too conventional and 'filmy.'
All in all, a film that one had really high hopes
for but unfortunately is a disappointment.
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