Gandhi, My Father

... is a poignant story, bringing out the angst of an unsuccessful son of an iconic father. It throws into spotlight the extreme emotions undergone by Harilal, who is overawed by his father’s aura, and wants to emulate him in his own life, when Gandhi, with his stubbornness and his inability to draw his lines where the country was concerned, always manages to put a spoke in his wheels.



What's the story?
The film begins with Gandhi’s displeasure of his son getting married, although it was he who approved the alliance. After marriage, Harilal joins Gandhi’s self-styled ashram in Phoenix, SA, where he helps his father in odd jobs at the press while preparing himself for a scholarship to go to England to study law. However, it is Gandhi’s desire to have Harilal help him in his grandiose plans for India’s freedom. Initially, Harilal acquiesces, in the hope that his father will somehow pull some strings and get him the scholarship. But when Gandhi refuses his education as a mark of protest against Western education, the seeds of discord are sown between the father and the son.

During a protest rally in SA, Harilal gets arrested. His hopes of his father pleading his case are shattered when Gandhi uses him as a guinea pig to test his new theory of passive resistance. Harilal is jailed as his father offers him no defence, and he sees his dreams of further studies going down the drain. His only source of strength is his wife Gulab, who keeps renewing Harilal’s dreams of being successful. But when he sees her leaving for India after he is jailed, Harilal realises that his father is employing arm-bending tactics to retain him in SA.

Once released from jail, he plots his return to India without his father's consent but is unsuccessful and father and son have a chat, where Harilal stresses that he is a common man, and the air of expectancy lingering around him due to his illustrious father is too much for him to bear. This is one of the many landmark points in the film which has you taking sides - while on the one hand you think Gandhi was just in retaining his son for the freedom movement; on the other, you also feel that Harilal has his own niche to carve.

Back in India, Harilal has one more hand at his studies, fails, gets himself a job, and manages to keep his life going. Gandhi returns to India, and gets busy with the freedom movement. Harilal approaches his father to lend him some money for business. Gandhi, as was his wont, pleads his inability as he does not maintain a "personal fortune" and will not ask any others for favours. Instead, he asks Harilal to come into his folds and join the freedom movement. Hari will not have any of it, and leaves.

Never having a business mind, Harilal stocks up on western fabric to sell them at a premium after the World War, but Gandhi brings in the swadeshi movement, and Harilal incurs losses. In his shortsightedness, he teams up with a team of sycophants, and allows them to collect funds in the name of Gandhi and make away with a sizeable fortune. When betrayed people approach Gandhi for redressal, Gandhi issues a public statement claiming his son does not have his backing anymore. This catches the attention of the Muslim fraternity, and they pay up the loans of a debt-ridden Harilal in a godfatherly gesture. Being almost disowned, Harilal decides to hit back on Gandhi by giving himself unto Islam and becoming Abdullah Gandhi. Nevertheless, his being a Gandhi secures him preferential treatment, which does not go very well with the Muslims, and Harilal reconverts to Hinduism by associating himself to the Arya Samaj.

In all of this, the tag of being Gandhi's son weighs down on him. Every action of his is judged whether it is worthy of someone who has a father like Gandhi himself. Drunk, ill, and hopelessly confused, he wanders along not knowing where he would get his next meal, when he hears of Gandhi's assassination. It is too much for him to bear. Five months after Gandhi died, his eldest son breathes his last in the cold corridor of a government hospital like a lone street urchin, brought in by the police, and ignored by everyone else.

What's good in it?
All the actors deliver a staggering performance, which may well be their career-best. The best performance will, of course, be debatable. While Akshaye does deliver a class-act everyone will remember for a long time, Darshan Jariwalla plays Gandhi to the hilt. In fact this man oozes Gandhi, and rightly so, is being talked about after the release. However, it may be attributed to the fact that Gandhi's mannerisms were known to the public through numerous films, and we have a notion of him. You only have to say Gandhi, and we have in our minds a dhoti clad "half-naked fakir", with a bald pate and a bright smile. And because no one knows how Harilal was, the absence of a original may just be a factor in not appreciating the imitation, and we may just have underrated Akshaye. Shefali Shah and Bhumika Chawla impress in their roles as Gandhi's wife and daughter-in-law.

Cinematography is top-notch, with scenes fading in and out at every logical cut-to-event. In fact, a very meticulous approach has been taken, and the hard work has paid off. This movie will be counted as one of the classics in Indian cinema, an extraordinary improvement in the quality and detailing of movies made on true events.

Recommendation: Must-Watch!!!