GANDHI (1982)
After watching this 188-minute biographical epic (possibly the only first-run film I ever saw in a theater that featured an intermission), it was years before I was able to see Ben Kingsley without thinking of his most iconic role. Now, almost three decades later, I’m so familiar with Kingsley’s onscreen persona (thanks to films like Bugsy, Sexy Beast and The Wackness) that it’s amazing to look back on Gandhi and consider how deeply the British-Indian actor submerged himself into the role of this lawyer-turned-freedom fighter, spiritual leader and all-around Great Soul. Richard Attenborough’s production was an old school event, featuring 300,000 extras (a Guiness World Record!) and racking up eight Academy Awards (including the trifecta of Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director) for its depiction of the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi from 1893 to 1948, through his early days as an activist for Indian rights in South Africa and his leadership in the struggle for Indian independence from England to his ultimate martyrdom at the hands of a radical Hindu assassin. This kind of large canvas storytelling frequently collapses under the weight of pretension, slack pacing and scattered focus (see: Australia), but Attenborough pulled off this cinematic monument with a clear-eyed discipline worthy of his extraordinary subject.
THE PRIVATE LIFE OF HENRY VIII (1933) & REMBRANDT (1936)
Here's why Charles Laughton was a movie star. (You could be excused for not always being clear on that.) With Henry VIII, a real warhorse of a classic early talkie, Laughton did as much as anyone to create the modern image of that much-married royal as a tantrummy spoiled child who did nothing but indulge his whims and send his clothes back to the tailor to be let out again, and he did it at such a generous comic pitch that he made the fellow seem lovable, even cuddly, like an Ewok with a weakness for having his ex-girlfriends beheaded. For a full taste of the big boy's range, it ought to be sampled alongside the much quieter Rembrandt, a surprisingly sensitive and engaging portrait of the Dutch master. For that cozy family feeling, both films feature charming appearances by the off-screen Mrs. Laughton, Elsa Lanchester, who was also the on-screen Bride of Frankenstein.
SWEET DREAMS (1985)
Patsy Cline died too young, but nobody can say that the movies haven't done all right by her. Beverly D'Angelo walked off with the second act of Coal Miner's Daughter as the pampered, saucy Patsy who taught poor little country girl Loretta Lynn how to be a star, and this full-length treatment, centering on the married-folks love story between Jessica Lange's Patsy and Ed Harris as Charlie Dick (one of those guys who was born to bathe in the light of a more exciting personality generous enough to decree him worthy), is like great country music in motion. For girl talk, Lange has Ann Wedgeworth, supporting actress extraordinaire, as her mama.
LUMUMBA (2001)
Raoul Peck's film stars Eriq Ebouaney, in one of the most towering unheralded great performances of the past decade, as Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lumumba was driven from office and assassinated two months into his term; when the movie was made, some forty years after the events it documents, the region was still such a political powder keg that locations had to be scouted far afield, and even after the film was released to theaters, a former American government advisor who felt that he'd been accused of being implicated in Lumumba's death got HBO to bleep the mention of his name from the soundtrack before the movie was broadcast on cable TV.
LUST FOR LIFE (1956) & VINCENT & THEO (1990)
In his tragically short life, Vincent Van Gogh was underappreciated, starved, mistreated, thought mad, and forced to go without his share of love and satisfaction, but he did get two pretty good movies made about him, and one of them inspired the title of an Iggy Pop song that somehow found its way into the ad campaign of Carnival Cruise Lines, so I guess it evens out. Directed by Vincente Minnelli and starring Kirk Douglas, with James Donald as Brother Theo and Anthony Quinn as Gauguin, Lust For Life is in the dramatic MGM style and played to the hilt; a huge success in its day, it is clearly enough a product of its time that it may be a bit underrated today, but it remains a very moving experience crafted by intelligent, talented people at the height of their game. The latter film, which stars Tim Roth as a Van Gogh so ferociously in love with life and so passionately aware of how much of it he's missing out on that he can seem open-hearted and embittered at the same moment, was directed by Robert Altman, and is very clearly the product of his sensibility alone. It is barely rated at all, because so few people have seen it.
Click Here For Part One, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five & Part Six
Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Phil Nugent