YMMV / Gandhi

• Complete Monster: Brigadier General Reginald Edward Harry Dyer oversaw the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre, intending "to inflict a lesson that would have an impact throughout all India". Dyer ordered his troops to fire "where the crowd was the thickest", and even had innocent civilians gunned down for trying to escape. His actions and callousness disgust his British peers, and catalyzes Mahatma Gandhi's pursuit for complete independence from British rule.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The fact that John Ratzenberger, one of the most distinctive voice actors of all time, gets a Same Language Dub. The fact that the voice used is so goofy it takes a modern audience completely out of the movie.
• Moral Event Horizon: Gandhi and his fellows were initially crusading simply for better treatment by the British Raj. However, after General Reginald Dyer orchestrates a massacre of peaceful protestors at a park, Gandhi declares now their only goal is full independence from the British Empire.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The Jallianwala Bagh massacre. Men, woman and children slaughtered in the hundreds, maybe even more than a thousand, on the orders of a heartless butcher who thought he would "teach them a lesson"^note This is historically correct - during the afterwards inquiry, he literally said his objective "was not to disperse the meeting, but to punish the Indians for disobedience". The whole sequence is as horrifying as it was historically, from Dyer making his troops fire on every Indian in sight, even on those trying to escape, to a few people jumping into the well in despair, then dozens more throwing themselves into the 'Martyr's well' until it looks like a literal flood of bodies.
  • The Dharasana Salt Works protest is as chilling as it is awesome. Stone-faced men line up shoulder-to-shoulder and march towards the cordon of British soldiers who savagely club them to the ground, without raising a hand to strike back... then once they fall, the next group line up to follow them. Again and again and again.
  • The horrific sectarian violence that rocked India after Pakistan broke away, where neighbors killed each other and trains pulled into stations full of corpses.
• One-Scene Wonder: Several renowned film and stage actors among the All-Star Cast qualify, some stand-outs include:
  • John Gielgud as 1st Baron Irwin
  • Trevor Howard as Judge Broomfield.
  • Edward Fox as General Dyer
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • A young Daniel Day-Lewis has one short scene as an Afrikaaner thug who intimidates a young Gandhi.
  • Bernard Hill appears as a British soldier stationed in India.
  • Amrish Puri appears early in the film as Mr. Khan, the Muslim businessman who hires Gandhi in South Africa.
  • John Ratzenberger as an American soldier driving Margaret Bourke-White. Why his voice gets a Same Language Dub is anyone guess.
  • Sonja Schlesin is played by Caroline Hutchison, who would later be best known for playing Vera Patterson in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
• Values Resonance: In a time of increased scrutiny and criticism over the legacy of the British Empire, particularly in India, the film's uncompromising representation of the struggles of Indian and Pakistani people under colonial rule and the disastrous consequences that plagues the subcontinent, even to the present day, makes it all the more relevant. Millions of children in India grew up watching this film on TV, and it remains popular in the nation today.