At one level, this beautiful period film is a gripping story of a relationship which utterly failed, between a father and son. But the tears I shed were not for this failure. I cried because this was the first time I saw Mahatma Gandhi at such close quarters as a flawed and normal human being, not a political saint. I cried for his loss. And most of all I cried because the enormity of what Gandhi accomplished for all of us was magnified by the pain of his personal life.
The central tension in this film by director Feroze Abbas Khan is the unsettled relationship between Gandhi and his eldest son, Harilal.  Khan’s words, quoted in a news magazine recently, pin down the eye of the storm - “Harilal carried his Gandhi identity like a curse around his neck. It was something that he just couldn't shake off.” And to make things infinitely worse, Gandhi just does not help. By wanting to turn his son into a mirror of himself, he creates a pale shadow which cries out repeatedly in desperation, appeals for help, stumbles from pillar to post, and dies a dingy death.
So we see Gandhi refusing to give in to young Harilal’s desire to become a barrister, but insisting that he become a satyagrahi instead. Gandhi giving away a scholarship that should rightly have been Harilal's to enjoy. Gandhi seeking his son’s love and affection, but unwilling (or perhaps unable) to give any in return.  Gandhi disowning his son for cheating investors, after never having really owned him in the first place. Gandhi, old and lonely and distraught in India’s bloody partition, searching for Harilal, but of course he has lost him completely by then. Because there is by now an unbridgeable chasm between their worlds – the strains of Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram and Vande Mataram are quite alien in the seedy brothels and street pavements which become Harilal’s adopted homes.
The film has many intense moments, delivered by fine performances. A lean Akshaye Khanna plays Harilal with surprising ease. Shefali Shah is a natural Kasturba Gandhi, and the beautiful thick-lipped Bhumika Chawla is fluent yet haunting as Harilal's wife Gulab.  But the piece-de-resistance is Darshan Jariwala as Gandhi, as he brings alive the human-ness of the Mahatma.  He reminds us at once that Gandhi is a national hero and saint, yet a failed father incapable of love. A man who moves the masses, but is unmoved by the desperate cries of his own family. A man whose voyage has consumed him completely, leaving him barren and bereft in so many parts of his own life. 
This is why I cried so much into my handkerchief when, towards the end of the film, we saw grainy but powerful footage of Gandhi's funeral procession. The stampede of worshippers who venerated Gandhi and rushed like madmen behind his cortege, yet knew nothing at all about the deep personal sacrifices he had made. A man who understood the heartbeat of India, yet did not care to understand his own son. A man who delivered our nation, yet failed his own family. If the former achievement makes us respect him, the latter failure makes us empathise with him. Because in real life, we love and weep for human beings who are a bit like ourselves, and not for distant Godly saints.