Ghandi

Very watchable, almost documentary like description of Ghandi's life. Not the best telling ever, but it boasts rock solid production and a fine central preformance to make it a decent telling of a story that it would be almost impossible not to make riveting.
First the positives; this is the story of the century. The man in shown in all his light as the man he was. The politics is not exactly made complex, but at least we know where we are. Ben Kingsley perfoms his part very well, the suspension of disbelief comes in early enough. He inhabits the role very nicely. No complaints there. The scenes and the crowds look good, there aren't any weak links. The storytelling is quiet, without any flair or interest, but doesn't get in the way.
Now for the negatives. Let us focus on the two main ones. Firstly, the backstory is not told well. We are left in the dark as to Ghandi's motivations. He seems to just turn up and decide to help. It all rather comes out of knowhere, which does a diiservice, making his goodness oddly arbitrary. This is accentuated as we don't really see the poverty, the struggle, Ghandi fights against. It is a sanitised picture of India we are presented with, no real nastiness or unfairness to rattle against. This feeds into a further criticism, that it is a British-centric portrayal. There are too many English characters, given too much importance. Ghandi seems alien, India seems alien. Why on earth was Ghandi played by an Englishman? Kingsley is good, but there are deep colonial problems there.
A very good film to watch, which deserves its long run time. They couldn't make a bad film out of this material. So, thanks to a good production we have a good film, but with questions not answered.