Spinning a tale (Gandhi (DVD))

Member Name: MykReeve

Product:	Gandhi (DVD)
Date:	06/10/01 (181 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent film, Nice presentation, Good packaging

Disadvantages: Intermission not flanked by chapter marks, Picture quality not great, Some colour bleeding

'Gandhi' is undeservedly one of the least well-known Oscar-winning films of recent years, picking up nine of the awards in 1982, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor. However, I'll be honest with you, I'd not actually seen it before the recent DVD release of the movie, and I certainly didn't realise how well received the movie had been at the time of its release. Nonetheless, the film is extremely memorable - not only for the quality of the performances, but also for the beautiful cinematography, the quality of the script, and the compelling story. Although the film is over three hours long, it never becomes dull.

THE FILM

'Gandhi' is (perhaps unsurprisingly) a biographical picture detailing Gandhi's life from his arrival in South Africa in 1893, after training as a lawyer in England, through to his assassination in 1948. In 'Citizen Kane' style, the film begins with the scene of Gandhi's assassination and funeral, before going back to reveal the man's past. The story of Gandhi is a fascinating one, dealing with his attempts to achieve Indian independent from the British Empire without bloodshed - a goal continually challenged both by the British and by internal conflicts.

THE DISC

- Distributor: Columbia Tristar (CDR 10135)

- Region: 2 (United Kingdom and Europe)

- Type: 1 x DVD-9 (single side, dual layer)

The layer change comes 1h 49m into the movie, at a scene break, and is neither noticeable nor distracting. For a film of this length, it seems odd to cram both the movie and the extras onto a single disc, and suggests a reduction in bit rate.

- Running time: 183 minutes

'Gandhi' is a very long movie, and at the cinema, the film was interrupted by an intermission, at approximately 1h 28m in. As is the case with several recent DVD releases (e.g. 'Ben-Hur', 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'Cleopatra')
the intermission has been retained on the DVD, complete with Ravi Shankar's sitar music.

Possibly the only problem with the inclusion of the intermission is chapter breaks haven't been placed on either side of it. Instead, the intermission just takes place in the middle of track 12. So if, while you're watching the film, you don't want to watch the intermission and hit the "track skip" button, you'll also miss the few minutes of the film that follow it.

- Picture format: 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen PAL

The picture is anamorphic, so if you have a widescreen television, the disc will make full use of it. Picture quality remains pretty good throughout, despite my concerns about the reduced bit rate of the disc. Even scenes with a lot of cloud or dust on screen don't suffer from the colour graduation problems that lower bit rate DVDs typically suffer from. The image is perhaps not as sharp as you might be used to with DVDs of more recent films, but this is more likely a problem with the original film than with the DVD mastering process. Colours are crisp and well presented, with very little bleeding between blocks of colour on screen - if there is any problem, it is that the reds are too rich relative to the other colours, but this really isn't a great problem.

This is a region 2 disc, so is presented in PAL format, which means it has been sped up slightly from the original theatrical presentation.

- Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 surround (English), Dolby Digital 2.0 (French and German)

Audio quality is excellent, making good use of all speakers in the Dolby surround mix.

- Subtitles: English, French, German, Dutch, Turkish, Danish, Arabic

Subtitles are presented in white text bordered in black, so that it remains readable throughout the film. There are no obvious errors in spelling and grammar.

- Presentation

Upon putting the disc in your DVD pl
ayer, you are presented with the skippable Columbia Tristar logo. Followed by an unskippable montage of clips from the film leading into the main menu.

The main menu itself is nicely presented, with Ravi Shankar's music accompanying a series of scenes from the film that scroll past at the top of the screen. Selecting any of the options triggers a brief cut-scene in which the main menu dissolves away as though it were sand blowing away.

The "scene selection" option shows four still images, linking to different scenes, per page. The film has been divided into 28 chapters.

- Packaging

The packaging of the disc is worthy of note too. The disc comes in a standard Amaray keep case, coloured gold, with a striking image of Gandhi wearing his white wrap on the front cover. The keep case is then enclosed in a clear plastic slip, which bears all the essential information about the disc - the back cover blurb, bar code, and details of the disc.

- Special Features

The disc's special features are somewhat disappointing, particularly considering how many Oscars the movie won. Certainly, it seems odd that Richard Attenborough has not provided at least an interview.

The first of the Special Features is a 19-minute film of Ben Kingsley talking about the movie. Kingsley is dressed in black, on a black background and looks oddly like a disembodied head, and his monologue is interspersed with clips from the movie. The interview was apparently recorded quite recently, and does have some very interesting sections, supposing you can tolerate Kingsley's sickening "luvvie-ness". Kingsley talks about how he got the role, mastered the voice of Gandhi, and how he learnt to spin and act at the same time. Throughout the interview, Kingsley attempts to introduce almost supernatural elements to the film - how Sheen felt that he "didn't know what Kingsley was going to say next", how the film&
#39;s production was guided by "unseen forces", and how 400,000 spectators went quiet as they recreated Gandhi's funeral procession.

The next special feature is the 5-minute "Making of 'Gandhi' photo montage". Essentially, this consists of a series of zooms into and out of stills from behind the scenes of the movie, accompanied by Ravi Shankar's sitar music. If you normally wouldn't look at production stills on a DVD, it's unlikely that the addition of music and zooms will make you any more excited about them frankly.

Next is the 2-minute "Words of Mahatma Gandhi" featurette. If you've ever wondered how much of a loss to the cocktail party circuit Mahatma Gandhi was, why not sit back and watch as 120 seconds of his best known quotes zoom in and out in front of your eyes to the accompaniment of Indian singing. Alternatively, go and look him up in a book of quotations... it'd be faster.

The next feature is more interesting, consisting of Newsreel footage of Gandhi. There are four bits of film, ranging from the entertainingly twee presentation of the Pathe newsreel "Gandhi goes to England" ("I'm sure he must have been frozen, we were in thick overcoats... he's wearing sandals, by the way.") through a couple of brief Hearst Metrotone newsreels ("Gandhi's farewell talk in Europe" and "Mahatma Gandhi begins his death fast"), to the Fox Movietone newsreel of Gandhi's first talking picture. This latter newsreel is quite amusing as it begins with a horribly staged conversation between a couple of Americans about Gandhi's supposed prejudice against being photograph. The interview with Gandhi himself is quite stilted and awkward, and the man's words are difficult to make out.

Filmographies are provided for seven of the main actors, as well as Richard Attenborough and the writer John Briley. These are as interesting as
a list of films can ever be.

Finally, the original 5-minute theatrical trailer is included, which is presented in widescreen, but is not anamorphic. The trailer is quite interesting for the decision to go with the standard gravel-voiced American narration - "He is coming. His greatest weapon was peace."

CONCLUSIONS

The 'Gandhi' DVD is very nicely presented, and the picture and sound quality are as good as could have been hoped for. The special features, however, are somewhat disappointing, but it is quite possible that due to the decision to cram the very long film onto a single disc, there wasn't much space left for further extras. It is surprising that there isn't more material from Richard Attenborough - an interview at the very least would have been nice, if not a commentary track.

I was puzzled by the fact that the intermission wasn't flanked by chapter marks, so that viewers could choose to easily skip it. This seems a clumsy bit of design in the mastering of the disc.

Nonetheless, the film is well presented, and the packaging is excellent. My problems with the disc are only relatively minor ones, and don't distract from the film's many strengths - this is certainly an excellent film that really ought to be seen by more people.

Summary: