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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Gandhi My Father: Rich (Poor) Dad Poor (Poor) Son


More sequels to come (disclaimer: purely as per my imagination):Gandhi my sonGandhi my BrotherGandhi my Father II, III and IV (on Gandhi and his second, third and youngest son relationships respectively)
And so on
Cast: Akshay Khanna (Harilal), rest don’t remember although acting by Gulab, Ba and Mohandas is excellent.
Movie – Overall: Sets, Dialogues, Makeup and performances are excellent. As far as direction and production is concerned, they carry Anil Kapoor marks as his presence in direction is quite visible although his name does not appear Direction.
Story, my take: What about the story? What is the purpose of this story? Story in short is about a fight of ideologies of Harilal Gandhi (who is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s eldest son) with his father Mohandas Gandhi. It is about the struggles of Harilal Gandhi with himself, with his incapabilities to choose right path for himself, with his unstable character. But I wonder that although the contents of the movie are filmed excellently but what was the intent or purpose of this movie – this movie is not a motivating theme, did Anil Kapoor want to show Gandhi as an incapable Father, or Harilal as incapable son, ok even if Harilal was an incapable son, what message does the movie transmit?
StoryHarilal is the eldest son of Gandhi. Gandhi is popular worldwide and is practicing barrister at South Africa. Harilal is matric fail and wants to become a lawyer like his father. He marries with Gulab at Gujarat, India. He moves alone to South Africa to live with his father and persuade him to help him in completing his matric and then learn law. His father sends his cousin on sponsorship to study law in London. Gandhi (father) is highly idealist and treat all people equal and at par, no preference even to his own family. Harilal goes to jail as Gandhi wanted him to do so. Hari goes back to India, starts business, lends money, loses all his money and business, creates bad name in the society, starts drinking heavily. His wife Gulab leaves him and takes away the children with her to her parent’s house.  Mohandas and Kastur come back to India, try to straighten up the life of Hari but of no use. He starts going to bad women. Hari gets converted to a Muslim and changes his name to Abdullah. He gets caught by police as he along with some other badly drunk miscreants is troubling people on the road. Hari gets bailed out, his mother comes and persuades him to return back to Hinduism, he does, but still is pathless and directionless. India gets independence, Gandhi is now a bigger name. Some businessmen convince Hari that if he allows them to use his name (in turn they wanted to use the Gandhi family name) in their business, they will pay him for this. He does it, loses again and starts running here and there. ultimately he falls ill (weak soul, weak mind, weak heart and finally weak body) and gets admitted to a hospital. All the story is in flashback as he gets admitted in hospital right in the start and then remembers the sequences happened in his life.
Unanswered Conclusion: rather some questions: Was Mohandas not able to devote enough time to his family? Was Kastur paying too much attention to Mohandas that she failed in understanding his sons? We are told only about Hari in this movie, what about Gandhi’s other three sons, did they also lost track in their life, did they also complained about their father not fathering properly? Was Hari not able to absorb and digest his father’s fame? Was he jealous with his father’s success? Did this become the main reason of his failures? Was Hari more focused in analyzing between right and wrong and thus failed to act in his life? Was Hari too much driven by others and his father too much self driven? Was Mohandas too good, selfless, honest and truthful and that became the cause of conflict between him and Hari? Was Hari wrong in going to his father in need of help? Was Mohandas right in not giving his son what he was expecting? Was Mohandas as successful father as a person, human being and lawyer? Was Mohandas not too idealistic? Was Hari over expecting from his father? Was Mohandas as Father was incapable of delivering? Was Hari right in not building his career and keep on taking money from his father for his day to day living? Was Kastur not the major cause of this conflict? Was Kastur’s main role to keep her husband happy without bothering or understanding anybody else in the family? Was Kastur too helpless and Mohandas too adamant that even after both of them understood the strengths and weaknesses of Hari they did not do anything and left everything on himself?
Do find out answers to above questions.

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