I can’t think of a better way to send him off than with his brother’s spoken-word rendition of that classic jazz anthem.
When I heard the news I thought it was about his brother David Attenborough. (I remember him mainly from a documentary on world religions that I watched for a college course.)
So did I (I know of David from Planet Earth), and I just now learned that they’re brothers. Interesting stuff. RIP.
I heard about this and told my husband how he must have been expecting it since he recently did a “my favorite moments” compilation documentary on Nova. My husband looks very puzzled by this. “You mean like a dino documentary?”
It took a couple of go-arounds before I realized I’m an idiot. David, Richard-- whats the diff? RIP Richard.
Oh and hey, wow, NONE OF THOSE ARE ABOUT EASTERN RELIGIONS OR OTHER THINGS THAT ARE UNCOMMON TO AMERICAN SOCIETY AND CULTURE.
So yeah, good job missing the point of the post you thought you were rebutting. Oh, and some percentage of your picks don’t really qualify as “biopics”, they are more “based on a true story”.
Come on, we do this all the time. Someone says “They would never make that movie today” and then someone comes back with dozens of examples of how they still do make movies like that today. It’s not specifically about “eastern religions,” but that’s not what Gandhi is about anyway. It’s a very straightforward biographical movie about his life. You know, the life of one of the most famous figures of the 20th century.
Why wouldn’t they still make movies like that anymore?
Well, yes, if you mischaracterize what someone else said to conform to an argument you’re prepared to rebut, it’s easy to show that they are wrong.
I get your point (they still make biopics), but the point you were rebutting (they are unlikely to make an epic biopic about someone who’s culture and religion Americans know little or nothing about) rings true to me. I haven’t seen any recent 4 hour epic US biopics about Guatama Buddha or Nakayama Miki or Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, for example.
I’ll be slightly more sad when his brother David dies. The Life on Earth documentary series was one of my strongest early memory of TV. Think I’ll have his voice in my head until I die.
Gandhi was one of the major figures of the 20th century. The movie’s creation has nothing to do with his culture and religion and everything to do with the fact that he was GANDHI. It was also insanely good (I saw it when I was like 12 and I was absolutely enthralled).
So yes, I do believe a movie like that could be made today. It’s just a biopic of one of the biggest people of the 20th century. They made one a few years ago about Margaret Thatcher too. It’s a popular theme for moviemakers of all nationalities/cultures.
and David McCallum. still working in a top-rated show.
Yes, indeed! Did you know he played Harold Bride (junior signals officer on the Titanic) in A Night to Remember?
I remember Attenborough from SOS Pacific, a wonderful B-movie in which an oddly-assorted bunch of lowlifes gets stranded on a Pacific island. 
Which is about to be used for an A-bomb test. :eek: Attenborough plays a marvellously slimy small-time crook.
The movie also has Eddie Constantine as the hero. Great screen presence.
Whereas I was wondering at all the movies people were listing, and that nobody was mentioning any of his documentaries.
The Dali Llama had one in the late 90’s, if your looking for another Eastern religious figure.
Given how much you love the movie, then you obviously know that while it may chronicle his life, his life was largely committed (according to the movie’s arc) with resolving the issues between Hindus and Muslims. For 3 hours, that’s its primary discourse–acceptance and justice in the face of religious extremism and intolerance.
Do they make biopics now? Of course–I never said they didn’t. But films about religion or religious figures are very rare, and if you exclude Judeo-Christian belief systems, they’re almost unheard of distributed by a major Hollywood studio. Quick quiz: Name 5 others. And how many of those you could name starred someone with no previous career in film? It’s unheard of.
What is unique about GANDHI is that it doesn’t siphon that particular story or character through a white prism and western sensibility, as many countless of other films have done (including others by Attenborough: CRY FREEDOM for example). It is unapologetically long and immerses itself in that religious language and philosophy deeply. Of course, having a main character and historical figure be the center of that story and conversation helps immeasurably, but the film he created does not shy away from issues of religion and just fall back on a series of anecdotes or incidents. It is what the movie’s all about (even if obvious overslimpifications take place). And that remains a very very rare thing.