Richard Attenborough
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A profile
Gayatri Jayaram
August 28, 2014
The man who made Gandhi
Cherubic, cheery, tenacious, Attenborough created an epic Indians could be proud of
Attenborough died on August 25,2014, four days before his 91st birthday.
Before Gandhi (1982), where Saeed Jaffrey who played Vallabhbhai Patel in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi got to know Attenborough the director, he had known Attenborough the actor. India was under the Emergency and Jaffrey and Attenborough were on the sets of Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khilari (1977)-Jaffrey playing the chess-mad aristocrat Mir Roshan Ali and Attenborough General James Outram. "He was a wonderful man, chirpy, laughing, a Virgo perfectionist, who saw direction not as imposing the director's will but allowing the actor to evolve into a role," recalls Jaffrey, attributing the remarkable freedom Attenborough gave to his cast to his being an actor himself.
In spite of the cheery casualness in his "It's entirely up to you, darling", Attenborough knew what he wanted from his actors-and he got it. He made Ben Kingsley, who played Gandhi, walk up the steps of the Aga Khan Palace in Pune over 50 times until he got the gait of a Kathiawadi Gujarati right. He took delight in making Jaffrey pile on the pounds for his role, supervising the food on his plate, and in getting his head tonsured into a shiny bald pate every morning.
It was that extraordinary tenacity in Attenborough that made him wait 18 years to create his epic film, which cost $22 million (Rs 17.6 crore) and famously had 300,000 extras just for the funeral scene. He told India Today in 1980 on the sets of Gandhi: "Eighteen years ago, I was a prosperous actor and partproducer- a comfortable existence…
Then I was handed Louis Fischer's biography of Gandhi by Motilal Kothari, and I can truthfully say it changed my life... Everything I have done since, from directing movies to rejecting acting roles, and making nearly 40 trips to India, has been to be able to make this one picture."
It was tough for friends, who remember Attenborough as a vibrant, dancing spirit, to see him spend his last days confined to a wheelchair. "I'm glad he is gone, his suffering ended," Jaffrey says.
Attenborough was the kind of man who continued to send Christmas cards after he left India. Simi Garewal, who introduced Attenborough to costume designer Bhanu Athaiya and who dubbed for Candice Bergen, who played photographer Margaret Bourke-White, says the cherubic filmmaker could be found dancing on the top of a train, telling a smutty story, or whipping back a repartee. He was known for directing the extra with the teensiest role as if she were a Hollywood star. "I never saw his manner change, be it for a national leader or a production hand. He was always civilised and genteel," says Garewal.
Roshan Seth, who played Jawaharlal Nehru in Gandhi, says, "He belonged to a breed of British filmmakers that is now gone. They were influenced by Hollywood. They talked and made films like Americans. Attenborough was like a commander-in-chief who brought together talented people. There was so much of talent on that set."
Gandhi, which won eight Oscars, including for Best Movie, Best Director and Best Actor, had its share of controversies. Attenborough was conferred with the Padma Bhushan in 1983, but many, including Morarji Desai, then chairperson of the Gandhi National Memorial Society, objected, believing an Indian was better placed than an Englishman to direct a film on the Father of the Nation. Rohini Hattangadi, who played Kasturba, and Seth say Attenborough could step back, look objectively and envision the tale that had to be told. Says Hattangadi: "The script was focused on how Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi turned into the Mahatma. There was no room for many others who mattered in the making of India. There was no space for Subhas Chandra Bose or Rajaji that an Indian director might have been pressured to include. This process of elimination was necessary. It would not have been possible for an Indian."
Seth says that the quality of Gandhi is that it speaks to its audience and it speaks to history.
"Here was a foreigner who made a movie that Indians could watch and be proud of. That has not happened before or since. That movie has survived for 30 years and will for another 30 years; who knows, maybe 300 years." -With Charmy Harikrishnan
