There are a lot of films in these brackets starting with the letter G and H. S0 I had a lot of choices for G including the winner of the Best Production Desing of the last ten years "The Great Gatspy" My first thought was to watch it, but I've seen it a few times and have already gushed about how much I love the look of the film.
Since I’m trying to keep a clear head and not watch too much CNN one of the films that stood out in all that were named with G is Gandhi. I thought it might be nice to see the peaceful side of cinema, but it really wasn't that serine. I’ve never seen Gandhi, I’ve seen bits and pieces but never the full film so I was kind of excited to sit down for 3 1/2 hours and just zone out. The first thing that really grabbed me about this film is the fact that they had so many sets over the course of his lifetime. It’s not that every set was big and extravagant. Some sets were very simple, rooms had no furnishings except to bed. But what really took me was the in enormity of the scenes with these huge crowds and how that must’ve had to be designed. There are at least four or five scenes with thousands of extras and that’s just an enormous amount of work for the whole crew to undertake when you have scenes like that so I really thought it was stunning.
The grittiness of India is shown in this but there’s also a really beautiful view of the simplicity. As Gandhi travels through the country and you see the countryside that is very undeveloped, yet so beautiful. I just thought it was a great way to see how India was at that time. I’m glad I got to finally watch this film. Especially right now with everything going on I needed a mental break. A beautiful film that won the Oscar for Production Design in 1983.