The project that Richard Attenborough tried to bring to fruition for twenty years turns out to have gotten done in the style of twenty years earlier, the style of a David Lean roadshow: there are no reserved seats, actually, and no musical overture or souvenir program, but there's an intermission, and a three-hour-plus duration, and a suffocating number of crowd scenes. (One could well imagine that it took twenty years to make this movie, if only just to sign up the million or so cast members.) The slow trek through fifty years of the Mahatma's political life, with countless speeches and words of wisdom interlarded between clubbings and massacres and riots, shows a severe shortage of narrative savvy. But Ben Kingsley, through his twinkly manner, endears himself as the Mahatma. With Martin Sheen, Candice Bergen, Ian Charleson, John Mills, and John Gielgud; written by John Briley. (1982) — Duncan Shepherd