GANDHI (1982) ***1/2 The immediate temptation when presented with a substantial portrait of a life so successful on so many levels is to claim that such success couldn't be replicated today; when movements are so splintered and issues so compromised. It is further humbling to consider whether Gandhi might have reached the same conclusion. It's worth noting that the film starts in South Africa, and that it was shot at a time when the anti-apartheid movement was gaining critical mass. Gandhi comes off as a strategist of brilliant simplicity as he utilizes his own incarceration, hunger strikes, unarmed masses, salt, and the consciences of horses as he engaged in a variety of battles designed to gain independence, ensure domestic tranquility, and convince Mrs. Gandhi to clean the toilet. It is, of course, impossible to define any life by 188 of its minutes, and Gandhi's life even more difficult than most. Richard Attenborough doesn't bother presenting a greatest hits package, he doesn't even offer room for my own personal favorite Gandhi quote ("There will always be as many religions as there are individuals."). Instead he offers up a streamlined, and quite nearly linear, script in a radical effort towards subjective impressionism. You can't help but get a good sense of what Gandhi was about, and that's a good sense to have.