Gandhi: Steelbook (4K UHD Review)

Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
Review Date: May 28, 2025
Format: 4K Ultra HD

Director

Richard Attenborough

Release Date(s)

1983 (April 29, 2025)

Studio(s)

Columbia Pictures (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment)

Film/Program Grade: A-
Video Grade: A
Audio Grade: A-
Extras Grade: B+

Review

Richard Attenborough’s Academy Award-winning 1982 historical biography Gandhi opens with the following title card, which isn’t in the final draft of the script by John Briley, so it’s not clear at what point during the production that it was added:

“No man’s life can be encompassed in one telling. There is no way to give each year its allotted weight, to include each event, each person who helped to shape a lifetime. What can be done is to be faithful in spirit to the record and try to find one’s way to the heart of the man...”

While that’s appropriately respectful to the memory of the real Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, it also feels like a setup for the kind of standard-issue historical epic that’s easy to dismiss as being blatant Oscar bait. Yet like everything else to do with Gandhi, those words are perfectly sincere. No one involved with the film was expecting success at the Academy Awards, with even Attenborough himself modestly believing that Steven Spielberg was the one who should have taken home the Best Director Oscar for E.T. that year. Yet Attenborough fought for two full decades to bring this story to the screen, and it was every bit the passion project for him. He put heroic efforts into securing financing for it, and he also had to navigate a potential minefield through all of the various parties that were involved (both Attenborough and the Indian government ended up putting money into the project in order to bring it to fruition). And then he had to marshal a truly epic multinational production with as many as 300,000 extras appearing in the funeral scene—to this very day, that stands as a record (and in the modern digital VFX era, it’s a record that probably will never be broken, either).

Spielberg would have his own day in the sun in 1994 (and he also bagged a second Oscar five years after that). Attenborough earned all of the honors that he garnered in 1983. It was the proper culmination of a long, strange trip for him as a filmmaker.

Of course, the whole film would still have fallen flat without the deservedly Oscar-winning performance by Ben Kingsley in the title role—and he was up against a staggering field of nominees that year including Paul Newman for The Verdict, Dustin Hoffman for Tootsie, Jack Lemmon for Missing, and Peter O’Toole for My Favorite Year. Yet Kingsley towered over all of them due to the way that he immersed himself in the role to an astonishing degree. He may not be a true Method actor, but his performance still feels more authentic than Hoffman’s mannered portrayal of Michael Dorsey/Dorothy Michaels. There’s no need whatsoever for suspension of disbelief when viewing Gandhi, because Ben Kingsley simply is Gandhi. He was aided by the fact that he was a relative unknown in 1982, yet even with full knowledge of his distinguished career over the decades since that time, it’s still impossible to separate the actor from the historical figure. The two simply became one.

Remarkably enough for a mainstream big budget film released in 1982, Gandhi manages to completely avoid the trap of telling a story about a person of color from the point of view of the white characters—a trap that Attenborough himself fell into just five years later with Cry Freedom, where Stephen Biko ended up being relegated to a supporting role in his own story. Rohini Hattangadi, Roshan Seth, and Saeed Jaffrey are prominently featured in Gandhi, but the supporting cast is filled with recognizable western actors like Ian Charleson, Martin Sheen, Candice Bergen, Geraldine James, Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard, John Mills, Shane Rimmer, Ian Bannen, Nigel Hawthorne, Richard Vernon, Michael Hordern, Daniel Day-Lewis, Bernard Hill, and John Ratzenberger. Yet they’re all minor characters who are properly backgrounded while Gandhi himself remains firmly in the foreground at all times. That’s unusual for the era, and as more recent films like The Help and Green Book have proved, there’s still plenty of progress to be made in that regard.

Progress is of course the main theme of Gandhi, and its message remains as relevant today as it was back in 1982. If anything, the current treatment of those who protest against injustice in America makes the events of Gandhi ring true in a way that probably seemed more distant to most Caucasian audiences back then (although African-American and Native American audiences would have understood it all too well). Yet now that the shoe has been on the other foot, Gandhi may feel a bit different to the diverse mainstream audiences of today. Authoritarian violence has proven truly egalitarian: it’s able to affect anyone regardless of class, ethnicity, gender, religion, or any other categorization imaginable, and so Gandhi’s message of non-violent resistance still rings true in any era or context:

“I praise such courage. I need such courage because in this cause, I too am prepared to die. But, my friend: there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. Whatever they do to us, we will attack no one, kill no one. But we will not give our fingerprints, not one of us. They will imprison us. And they will fine us. They will seize our possessions. But they cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.

I am asking you to fight. To fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow. But we will receive them. And through our pain, we will make them see their injustice. And it will hurt, as all fighting hurts. But we cannot lose. We cannot. They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then, they will have my dead body – not my obedience.”

Cinematographers Billy Williams and Ronnie Taylor shot Gandhi on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex Gold, Panaflex X, and Arriflex cameras with Panavision E-series anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.39:1 for its theatrical release (70mm blowup prints were full-frame 2.20:1 instead). Befitting such a complex and challenging production, Williams initiated the project but had to leave India temporarily when he suffered from a slipped disc. Taylor took over in his absence, and then Williams returned to finish the film once he had recuperated. Those challenges continued decades later during the 2020 digital restoration of the film. According to Grover Crisp in his restoration notes for the Columbia Classics 4K Ultra HD Collection: Volume 1, the negative suffered from an abundance of scratches, embedded dirt, and chemical staining. 4K scanning and initial restoration work was performed at Prasad Corp., with additional restoration and grading completed at Roundabout Entertainment. While the Columbia Classics version only offered HDR10, Sony has upgraded that to Dolby Vision for this new Steelbook release.

Regardless of HDR flavor, the results of all that hard work are simply outstanding. Williams and Taylor used Eastman 5247 stock, rated at 100 and 64 ASA, with an 85 filter but no diffusion of any kind (although Williams told American Cinematographer that the omnipresent dust provided some diffusion of its own). As a result, the grain is refined and smooth, with pinpoint levels of detail. The image is razor-sharp, with every grain of sand, every pore on every face, and every thread on every costume reproduced perfectly. All of the damage that Crisp mentioned has vanished without a trace. Every subtle nuance in the skin tones is also reproduced accurately, and while the landscapes are dominated by those dusty browns and tans, the colors spring to vivid life inside the cloistered surroundings of the upper class—it’s a perfect way of visualizing the differences within the Indian caste system, with the British colonial layer added on top of that. Colors, contrast, black levels, densities—there’s nothing to complain about here. If it’s not perfect, it’s as close as humanly possible.

Primary audio is offered in English Dolby Atmos, 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, and 2.0 stereo DTS-HD Master Audio. Gandhi was released theatrically in optical Dolby Stereo for 35mm engagements and in 6-track mag on 70mm prints (Dolby A encoded). This 2.0 track appears to be the theatrical Dolby Stereo mix, while the source for the 5.1 remix isn’t entirely clear. Yet the jewel in the crown here is the new Atmos mix that was added for the Columbia Classics set. Going back to those restoration notes again, Brian Vessa said that the primary source for the Atmos version was the 6-track stereo composite mix from the 70mm release, but they also had the original dialogue, music, and effects stems to work with—in other words, it’s all the original sound effects, just repurposed to take advantage of the object-based capabilities of Atmos. The added immersive qualities are readily apparent as soon as the opening titles begin, with the effects placed around the room with more directionality and precision than they had in the Dolby Stereo mix. The wonderful score by Ravi Shankar and George Fenton has also been drawn out more from the front channels, placing the viewer further forward into the soundstage, and thus further forward into the film itself. Sony remains the best in the business when it comes to creating new Atmos mixes that gently expand the original mixes while still remaining faithful to them, and while this one may not be quite up to the high bar that they’ve set with some other titles, it’s damned close.

Additional audio options include French, German, and Italian 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, as well as Portuguese, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), and Thai 5.1 Dolby Digital. Subtitle options include English, English SDH, Arabic, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Sony’s 4K Ultra HD Steelbook release of Gandhi is a four-disc set that includes the film spread out over two BD-100s (the original intermission is the dividing point), plus a Blu-ray with a 1080p copy of the entire film and a second Blu-ray with additional extras. There’s also a slipcover that matches the artwork on the Steelbook, with a Digital Code on a paper insert tucked inside. There are no extras on the first UHD, although the second one offers a couple of trailers, but the majority of the extras are on the Blu-rays (which appear to be repressings of the older discs, not remastered copies):

DISC TWO: FEATURE FILM (UHD)

Theatrical Trailer 1 (HD – 2:55)
Theatrical Trailer 2 (HD – 5:05)

DISC THREE: FEATURE FILM (BD)

Introduction by Sir Richard Attenborough (SD – 1:24)
Audio Commentary by Sir Richard Attenborough
Gandhi’s Legacy: A Picture-In-Graphics Track

The introduction and commentary with Attenborough were both recorded for the 2007 25th Anniversary DVD release of Gandhi, while the Picture-in-Picture track was added for the 2009 Blu-ray (which, confusingly enough, was still billed as being a 25th Anniversary edition). He would have been 83 at the time, so his speech patterns were slow and deliberate, but his memories were sound and he offers plenty of insights regarding the making of the film, as well as his own thoughts about Gandhi himself. The Picture-in-Picture track offers popup historical factoids and more details about the making of the film. (Note that while both tracks can’t be selected at the same time via the main menu, the audio options aren’t locked out after choosing the PiP track, so you can select that first and then add the commentary via the audio button on your remote.)

DISC FOUR: EXTRAS (BD)

Interviews:
- Ben Kingsley Talks About Gandhi (SD – 19:23)
- From the Director’s Chair – On Casting (SD – 7:03)
- From the Director’s Chair – On Music (SD – 2:54)
In Search of Gandhi (SD – 9:26)
Looking Back (SD – 18:21)
Madeleine Slade: An Englishwoman Abroad (SD – 9:41)
Reflections on Ben (SD – 9:23)
Shooting an Epic in India (SD – 17:56)
Designing Gandhi:
- Building the Ashram (SD – 1:16)
- The Tent (SD – 2:06)
- Finding Trains (SD – 2:16)
The Funeral (SD – 13:34)
The Words of Mahatman Gandhi (SD – 1:58)
Newsreel Footage:
- Gandhi Goes to England (SD – 3:42)
- Gandhi’s Farewell Talk in Europe (SD – 1:09)
- Mahatma Gandhi Begins His Death Fast (SD – :53)
- Gandhi Talks (SD – 4:20)
The Making of Gandhi Photo Montage (SD – 5:24)

The bulk of the rest of the extras are also ported over from the 2007 DVD (although a few like the interview with Kingsley date back to the original 2001 DVD). There are three different Interviews, one with Kingsley, and two with Attenborough. Kingsley explains the process of crafting his performance, as well as some of the challenges in making the film (in addition to the expected logistical challenges, they had to deal with the caste system that was still an open obstacle). Attenborough describes himself as not being a cineaste, and the reason why he makes films is that he loves working with actors. Hollywood was still using actors of the wrong ethnicities in 1982, but Attenborough insisted on authenticity in the casting. He also says that music and rhythm are essential parts of Indian culture, so Ravi Shankar became a crucial component of the rhythms of the film. While In Search of Gandhi is listed separately in the menus, it’s also an interview with Attenborough, this time reflecting on his two decades long quest to make the film.

Looking Back is more of a making-of featurette, offering interviews with Attenborough, Edward Fox, Geraldine James, Saeed, Jaffrey, Billy Williams, production designer Stuart Craig, production executive Terrance Clegg, and publicist Diana Hawkins (interestingly enough, Attenborough and Hawkins both affirm that they thought E.T. was going to take home the Oscars that year—Attenborough says that Spielberg’s film surpassed his own by miles.) Madelaine Slade: An Englishwoman Abroad features Attenborough and James reflecting on bringing the real-life Slade (aka Mirabehn) to life in the film. Attenborough, Jaffrey, Clegg, and Williams return for Reflections on Ben, where they talk about the lengthy casting process and how Kingsley quickly became the only possible option for the lead role. Shooting an Epic in India is another making-of featurette, this time focusing on the logistical challenges (including the potential protests over a western company making a film about Gandhi). It includes interviews with Attenborough, Clegg, Hawkins, Williams, and Fox. Designing Gandhi is a brief three-part look at different bits of Stuart Craig’s production design. The Funeral covers the truly insane logistics of staging the funeral sequence, including interviews with Attenborough, Clegg, Hawkins, James, Jaffrey, Craig, and Williams.

Aside from a Photo Montage, the rest of extras consist of historical material. The Words of Mahatma Gandhi is a brief montage of quotes accompanied by Ravi Shankar’s music. Finally, there’s a collection of four different newsreels from the era by Pathé Gazette, Hearst Metrotone News, and Fox Movietone News, some of which feature Gandhi in his own voice. They can be played individually or as a group.

Personal confession: I’m one of the people who felt that Gandhi didn’t deserve Best Picture and Best Director back in 1983—although it was hard to take umbrage with Kingsley, even if that denied Paul Newman his overdue recognition. I would have been thrilled if E.T., had taken home those awards instead (although to be perfectly honest, I was rooting for Sidney Lumet and The Verdict). At the time, I had a personal bias against actor-filmmakers, generally viewing them as somehow lesser than “real” filmmakers like Spielberg or Lumet. Yet over time, I’ve come to appreciate Attenborough’s gifts, and it’s hard to deny his amazing accomplishment with Gandhi. While this lovely 4K remaster has been effectively paywalled behind the steep price of the first Columbia Classics boxed set, it’s fantastic that Sony has now released a more accessible solo version, and it’s highly recommended for anyone who doesn’t already own that set.

-Stephen Bjork

(You can follow Stephen on social media at these links: Twitter, Facebook, BlueSky, and Letterboxd).