Gandhi features Sir Ben Kingsley as the historical revolutionary who defined non-violent protest and spent his life working to free his people from English rule. The film starts off in the late 1800's after Gandhi has left law school and journeys to South Africa to practice. This is also his first encounter with racism as he realizes that anyone of color (from Hindu to Muslim to African) is of lesser status, even though they are all supposedly citizens of the English Empire. This is also his first foray into protesting, as he and several others gather around a fire pit to burn their papers. This symbolic gesture is to show that they should not need to carry around these documents since the English don't. This action leaves him badly beaten, but his message goes out and eventually the government has no choice but to grant the people's wishes and work to make every South African British citizen more equal.
But, of course, Gandhi's real work doesn't begin until he returns to India and starts to live life like the common Indian. He burns his British made suits and forgoes any expensive living arrangement to go back to his roots and start a protest that would eventually lead to hunger strikes, marches across India to make salt (a product Britain had an iron-clad control over) and many other acts of non-violent protest. At first, he isn't noticed by that many, but it isn't long before the population of India starts to notice him over the other speakers vocalizing home rule. It seems like the reason why the people started following Gandhi over the other orators stems from his belief that replacing the English colonials with a Hindi/Muslim ruling caste would be worthless and that the best people to govern India would be the Indians. This is also shown by his move to a much simpler life where he does everything from spin his own cloth to feed goats and even dig latrines.
Both the movie and Gandhi's history is long and full of meaningful events. Based on the research I did after seeing this movie, it seems the film does a fairly good job of touching on most of his major achievements (right up to his assassination). The film is obviously a character-driven one and while interesting, you can feel pretty much every one of the film's 191 minutes (yes, over 3 hours). But, the man did a lot and to skim over any more than what the creators already did would do him a disservice.
As for special features, this 2-Disc Special Edition has a lot for any fan of the film. The only addition the Blu-ray release has over the DVD version is a trivia track that discusses everything from the locations seen in the movie to Gandhi and his friends in general. As for the rest of the special features, the second disc is crammed with everything from interviews with Kingsley and Director Richard Attenborough to featurettes on casting and filming the movie, as well as set design and how the crew worked to make everything as historically correct as possible. As an added bonus, the Blu-ray also comes with old news footage of Gandhi, which was really nice to see since there are several times in the film where they duplicate those reels.
While I enjoyed watching Gandhi (I must admit, this was the first time I had seen the film), it is definitely not a movie to be watched on a whim. You have to be in the mood for it and have 3 hours or so to spare. That all being said, I don't see a lot of benefit to the Blu-ray version over the DVD. The picture seems only marginally better and there isn't enough action to really warrant needing surround sound. If you are a fan of the film and looking to get the collector's edition, then I would look into the DVD release over the Blu-ray one.
