Dayvan Cowboy by Boards of Canada <| sep |> Aww crap that sucks dude gl trading and make sure to always double check <| sep |> Is the defense tired ? What the fuck <| sep |> I still love the title card jokes . You usually know its coming at this point but like when dee says theres no way I am dating a retarded person . Sweet Dee is dating a retarded person <| sep |> clemency doesn ' t work when your prisons don ' t actually make people better human beings , but worse . <| sep |> Oh my god this actually made me gag <| sep |> Rather than focus on specific historical nitpicks , the real problem with the Gandhi biopic is twofold . One problem of the film has is that there is a vast disjuncture between Gandhi the historical figures versus the popular mythology that has built around him . The 1982 biopic is a reflection of this latter aspect of Gandhi ' s image . The film presents Gandhi and his world in starkly Manichean of light versus dark . Note that Kingsley ' s performance almost universally praised among critics is one that highlights Gandhi ' s stoic and moral gravitas and thus accentuates this duality . Many of the other historical characters in the film shrink compared to him . Nehru , for example , is often in awe of Gandhi in the film , and Jinnah is almost a villain in an illfitting suit . The reality of course is that Gandhi inhabited an incredibly complex political and moral world . The film stakes out a position that Gandhi ' s moral positions become the logical solution to the complex problems of both independence and postindependence India . Such a portrayal not only sidesteps the issue of their effectiveness , but also denudes Gandhi of his own political strategy and agency . Gandhi in the film seeks moral solutions because they are a reflection of his transcendent goodness , not as deliberate choices made by a conscious political actor . Moreover , when these moral stratagems fail , the film does not fault Gandhi , but rather the larger moral failings of Indians , and , by extension , the wider world . This is clear in the film ' s staging of Gandhi ' s assassinationjoT 1 jCWzlc which is an event drained of almost all context . His assassin is a near cipher whose motivations are unclear and Attenborough frames this moment in history as humanity ' s rejection of this transcendent saint . The second major failing of the film is its supporting cast and characters . In a touching scene with Charles Freer Andrews , Kingsley ' s Gandhi tells his white Christian friend that the struggle for Indian independence is not Andrews ' s fight and has to be one fought by Indians . Unfortunately , Attenborough did not really have the wherewithal to follow through on this conviction . The film interprets Gandhi ' s subsequent actions like the Salt March through the eyes of white characters . Whether Candice Bergen ' s Margaret BourkeWhite or John Gieguld ' s Lord Irwin , it is white people who seem to be the most impacted by Gandhi ' s message and moral force . As one Indian critic of the film put it , it is unclear in the movie if Gandhi had any Indian friends or colleagues . Indians exist in the film as either obstacles for Gandhi or vessels which receive his wisdom . They have little in the way of a narrative arc like some of the white characters . Jewaharlal Nehru actually advised Richard Attenborough not to deify Gandhi , as that is what we have done in India and he was to great a man to be deified . Although Attenborough claimed to follow Nehru ' s advice , Gandhi has fallen into the trap of many biopics by oversimplifying its subject and the context of the times . While the above criticisms are aesthetic ones , they compound to form a very problematic interpretation of Indian history that reduced the bulk of Indians into extras in an important part of their own history . Indian independence was more than one saintly Indian man and a coterie of white people and some Indians reacting to him .