The Gandhi of Gandhi My Father on filmy Mahatmas

Mumbai: Playing the Father of the Nation on screen, is a big deal. Particularly if predecessors like Sir Ben Kingsley, Naseeruddin Shah and Lage Raho Munnabhai's Dilip Prabhavalkar have done the job before. And done it well.

For actor Darshan Jariwalla who stepped into the Mahatma's toga for Gandhi My Father, it was a daunting task. The actor talks about the previous cinematic portrayals of Mahatma Gandhi.

"Ben Kingsley was fantastic, his emotional intensity was amazing. I remember his wit, his humour which was brought out with absolute compassion he brought out, their Gandhi was muscular, they decided to go with it because they were bringing out the emotional character was much better than adhereing to physical norms," says he.

Of Naseeruddin Shah, he says, "I remember watching Hey Ram on TV and I saw it mostly because the film was made by my favourite actor Kamal Hassan. He does bring in Gandhi as a character but it is mostly about Ram."

And finally about Dilip Prabhavalkar, Darshan Jariwalla says, "Dilip Prabhawalkar is an excellent character. He was told to play a character as someone else's imagination and any comparsion would be odious because it is not Gandhi, it is the figment of someone else's imagination."

And finally, here are Jariwala's own famous last words, about his interpretation of the Mahatma in Gandhi My Father.

"I have absolutely not to taken any references. Any performance is not a cut and paste job or a collage of what other people have done before. When you view a film as a viewer, you view it in its totality. I could have looked at archives. We have given physical part importance but not prominence. The ring of truth in his voice, his articulate way of without faltering even once -- when the original is there for us to see, why look at copies?" says Jariwalla in his own inimitable style.

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