Word: attenborough
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...RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH'S GANDHI is probably as morally simple a work as one is likely to see in a movie theater today. In essence, it is a piece of allegory of the lesser kind. It relies on the viewer's allying himself with the moral forces and ideas represented by a single character instead of identifying and sympathizing with a character's complex attitudes, thoughts and feelings as a more realistic work would demand. Given this simplicity, Gandhi still succeeds and entertains--almost certainly as well as a movie of its kind could...
Gandhi. Richard Attenborough's 3-hr. 20-min. film is a historical epic on the grand scale, but one that touches the heart with its moral earnestness and the marvelous humanity of Ben Kingsley's performance in the title role...
Life On Earth (PBS). A tale of wonders, the saga of evolution and the ascent of life, from bacteria to man, lovingly told by British Host David Attenborough...
...Richard Attenborough's film (which runs over three hours) is itself the product of an unflagging will; it took him more than 20 years to finance and mount it (cost: about $22 million). In the circumstances it would be a pleasure to report that his directorial skill matched his producer's zeal, but Attenborough's style is traditional-stately. His imagery of the Indian landscape has a conventional handsomeness that is more predictable then enlivening. His staging of the many and brutal confrontations between Gandhi's followers and their official oppressors is competent and craftsmanlike...
...which matters less than one might think. Indeed, the refusal to be flashy finally seems to be an earnest of the obvious idealism that Attenborough brought to his work, and of his apparent desire to both demythologize and demystify his subject, thus restoring Gandhi to human dimension. The director's stylistic self-denial serves to keep one's attention fastened where it belongs: on a persuasive, if perhaps debatable vision of Gandhi's spirit, and on the remarkable actor who has caught its light in all its seasons...