Gandhi (1982) - All students need to see this

I was looking for movies that may be good to share for our current unit on intercultural communication and issues of race and ethnicity and picked up Gandhi as one of them.

I think I watched this biography back in high school, and remembered it as a powerful story, but I think it is much, much more powerful now watching it twenty years later.

This definitely has to be on a list of "must watch" movies for students all over the world. If you haven't seen it, get it this weekend.

Most importantly, the film challenges all of us to grapple with the principle of standing up and standing firm against injustice using active but peaceful resistance, and to pursue peace and forgiveness over revenge and destruction. The movie includes a dialogue between a LIFE magazine reporter and Gandhi about whether Hitler could be stopped with non-violence. That would be an interesting class discussion to develop.

Some Gandhi quotes from the movie and elsewhere:

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always."

and my favorite, which I wrote in the ICU yearbook last year, and which is always a heavy yet important thought to bear:

You must be the change you want to see in the world.

Mahatma Gandhi
Indian political and spiritual leader (1869 - 1948) 

Since 2007, his birthday, October 2nd, is the International Day of Non-Violence. I didn't know that until today. But I wonder if anything is ever done in Japan or the US in relation to that?

Also, I had heard this before, but reading the Wikipedia article on Gandhi reminded me:

"At his middle school in Porbandar and high school in Rajkot, Gandhi remained a mediocre student. He shone neither in the classroom nor on the playing field. One of the terminal reports rated him as "good at English, fair in Arithmetic and weak in Geography; conduct very good, bad handwriting."

So, if you don't shine in school, that does not mean you will not make a big contribution or difference.

Finally, quoting from Roger Ebert's review in 1982:

"What is important about this film is not that it serves as a history lesson (although it does) but that, at a time when the threat of nuclear holocaust hangs ominously in the air, it reminds us that we are, after all, human, and thus capable of the most extraordinary and wonderful achievements, simply through the use of our imagination, our will, and our sense of right."