he sea contemplating his return to India. It is the year 1915. Gandhi spent 21 years of his early adult life in South Africa and returned to India a popular hero.
Gandhi, My Father (2007)
The film is framed by a scene in 1948 where of Gandhi’s, Harilal, is found near death, the authorities label him a drunkard and a beggar. It opens in Durban, South Africa in 1906 where Gandhi and his wife, Kastur, receive a letter from their son announcing his plans to marry against his father’s wishes. Harilal is called back to South Africa, leaving his pregnant wife. He goes to work in his father’s law office. The family is living at Phoenix Settlement. This part of the film covers much of the same territory as The Making of the Mahatma (1996), centering on Gandhi’s struggle for Indian equality in South Africa. He returns to India in 1915, transformed to the iconic Bapu dedicated to selfless service. Hari is sinking into failure, blaming his lack of education and inability to live up to his father’s ideals. “I must find my own path. Search for my own identity.” He gets involved in business ventures that are opposed to those ideals. When he swindles his employer, his father advocates stern punishment from the law. He begins to drink, and his wife leaves him. Gandhi struggles to hold him accountable for his actions and tries to help his distraught daughter-in-law. His wife and son die and he falls apart. His father tries to help but the offer is refused.
Next we see him in Calcutta trying to put his life together. There is a father-son reconciliation. Gandhi wants Hari to join the fight for independence. He does. A group of businessmen approach him offering to start a corporation using his name. They are persuasive and he agrees. It fails and he absconds. Gandhi dissociates himself from his son and dedicates himself to eradicating Untouchability, and promoting Hindu-Muslim unity. There is fierce opposition and an assassination attempt is made. Hari is rescued from ruin by Islamists and converts to Islam. Soon he becomes a deeper embarrassment to his family and to the Islamists. Shamed, he returns to Hinduism, and to alcohol. The adulation of Gandhi and Mother Kasturba reaches fever pitch across India. Documentary footage shows the rebellion in the streets. Hari is now a derelict. Kasturba dies in Gandhi’s arms. The issue of partition creates riots and massacres. Gandhi tries feebly to halt the barbarism. Sensing he is near death, he searches for Harilal. Independence comes amid mass celebration and horrifying violence. The destitute Harilal hears the news of his father’s death. He joins the crowds at the cremation but is trampled. He dies in a hospital in Bombay five months after his father’s death.
Bhowani Junction (1956)
Set in India of 1947, this film offers a panoramic look at the early years of Indian independence (granted by the British in 1947). It stars Ava Gardner as a half-caste woman torn between her love for her homeland and her feelings for a British Colonel (Stewart Granger). Granger is charged with helping with an orderly transition. The enemy here appears to be the Communists. Filmed on location in Lahore, Pakistan, it is based on the John Masters novel. The focus for this film is on the effects of the British departure from India. The setting is modeled on the city of Jhansi in central India. It is a major railway junction.
This picture, though filmed in Pakistan, gives a very fine portrait of India in the period leading to the death of Gandhi. The choice of casting Ava as a half-caste is inspired. She forms the pivot in a situation fraught with deep cultural and racial contradictions. This is quite a remarkable subject area for 1956. Stewart Granger, called Rodney Savage, anchors the British end of the spectrum and strikes the appropriate note of enlightened arrogance. He must try to maintain order in a society that is on the brink of chaos. There are scenes of riots in the streets that are very convincing. Though there are efforts from the Gandhian faction to preserve the agenda of non-violence, there are others who a