MISSISSIPPI MASALA
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: What could have been prosaic Romeo- and-Juliet material has more interest when the communities are Indian and black and the woman's father is an Indian exile from Uganda who dreams of returning. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4). The advance publicity made MISSISSIPPI MASALA look like another Romeo and Juliet story told on the backdrop of a cultural clash. In a way that us what it is, but it also rises above that to tell the more interesting story of a man who has lost his country because of the color of his skin and how he must decide whether he is willing to pay the price to get it back. It is a story of Indian-black racial tensions on two continents in the 1970s and the 1990s.
In 1972 Idi Amin's reign of terror is reaching out to all non-black residents of Uganda. Jay (played by Roshan Seth) is a liberal Indian lawyer practicing in Uganda. After having given too frank an interview to the BBC, Jay is thrown in jail. A friend bribes Jay's way out of prison but, like all non-blacks, Jay is thrown out of Uganda together with his wife and his young daughter Mina. He flees first to England, but finally settles down with an Indian community in Mississippi. There he does little but dream of getting the new Ugandan government to restore his lands. His wife supports the family by running a liquor store in a black neighborhood. Mina (played by Sarita Choudhury), now grown up, becomes romantically involved with a black man, Demetrius (played by Denzel Washington), who runs a carpet cleaning company. There are the predictable repercussions in the two communities.
There are several nice ironies in the resulting conflict. Demetrius believes that the Indians behave too much like the whites. Yet what we see of Demetriius's family shows them living very much the standard white American lifestyle. They look a lot like the All-American family. Joe Seneca, incidentally, gives a stand-out performance as Demetrius's father. It is Mina's family that lives int he squalid Motel Monte Cristo and maintains their traditional customs. It is the Indian Jay who wants to go back to Africa to live, not the blacks. One black does toy with the idea, but it is clear the black family has roots too deeply set in the United States. There are some nice character portraits and vignettes of the Indian community. In one amusing scene we see a motel clerk practicing his bicycle riding and his phone answering at the same time.
Director Mira Nair previously did SALAAM BOMBAY which was popular with the critics, but this is the more entertaining film. I rate it a +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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