Mississippi Masala

The director Mira Nair made a surprising discovery a long time ago: A lot of independent motels in the Deep South are owned and run by Asian Indians (I’ve known that forever). Although they go all the way back to India or Pakistan, many of them arrived in America through Uganda, where they had set aside roots for two or three generations, showing a talent for running small businesses before Idi Amin demanded them out in 1972. Roger Ebert noted, “Nair, who is herself from India via Harvard, made her discovery while journeying in the South after the release of “Salaam Bombay!” (1988), her wonderful first film about a street child.” She decided to make a movie about it.

Her 1992 film starts in Uganda, where an Indian lawyer’s family has a comfortable and secure life until Amin takes the property of tens of thousands of Indians and demands they leave immediately. The story continues in Greenwood, Mississippi, where the lawyer and his wife, played by Roshan Seth and Sharmila Tagore, own a worn out roadside motel, Their daughter Mina, played by Sarita Choudhury, a child of vague memories of Africa, has grown into quite a beauty of 24, with an American accent that immediately implies she does not share all of her family’s ideas.

Driving a car one day, she crashes into the van of a young black man, played by Denzel Washington, and gives addresses and maybe a slight look of curiosity. He’s interested too, and eventually they go out on a date. This is not the sort of social life Mina’s parents are supportive of. They expect their daughter to marry within their extended community of Indian exiles, and say she is never to see Washington’s character.

This order only is given to emphasize the isolated nature of the young woman’s life, and there are ironies in the racism and color consciousness she faces. Within her own community, she is considered too dark-skinned to make an attractive wife (her mother explains that if you want to have a husband, you can be dark and rich, or light and poor, but not dark and poor). Within the black community, the Indian woman is at first liking how friendly they are (Washington takes her to meet his family at a backyard picnic). However, after every single one of the Indian motel owners boycott Washington’s rug-cleaning company, the blacks also get furious.

Ebert noted, “What we are dealing with is more than a transplanted version of “Romeo and Juliet.” Both the black and Indian characters (and certainly the local whites, who are not much of a factor in this movie) have a vast and comfortable lack of curiosity about other races; they prefer to think of them in stereotypes, and have no desire to meet them as individuals. When the Indian woman and the black man meet and fall in love, everyone on all sides falls obediently into place to condemn their relationship.”

It was racism, obviously, that brought the Indians to Africa in the first place, to build the railroads, and racism that exiled them. And it was racism that brought Africans to America. Ebert mentioned, “But to be a victim of the racism of others does not inoculate anyone against the prejudice that can grow in their own hearts.”

All of these serious questions remain just under the outline of “Mississippi Masala,” (released in 1992) which is, regardless of the subject, surprisingly funny and happy at times, and gives a full-blown romanticism.

Denzel Washington is an actor of great and natural charm, and he makes the right match with Sarita Choudhury, and newbie who looks a little awkward in some of her scenes, but uses that feeling as part of her performance.

Ebert said, “If I have a complaint about Nair's work, it's that she tries to cover too much ground. She knows a lot about her subject, but should have decided what was important and left out the rest. The scenes in Uganda, for example, are not necessary for narrative purposes, and her closing scenes (as the father returns to the home of 20 years earlier) upstages the conclusion of the love story.”

Ebert goes on to say, “She also has a lot of material about the daily lives of Indians in Mississippi, and while I find some of it amusing and all of it interesting, it also serves to keep the young lovers out of the foreground for extended periods of screen time.”

There are really three movies playing in this one: the exile from Uganda, the love story, the lives of Indians in the Deep South, and really only screen time enough for one of them.

Ebert said, “And yet I do not complain too much, because “Mississippi Masala” has the benefit of showing me people I had not met before, coping with the human currents that carried them all, blacks and Indians, out of Africa and across the ocean to Mississippi.” The movie is about people who, having survived those commotions, nevertheless have no curiosity about those outside their own social and racial boundaries – and about a few who do.

I would say that you should check this movie out because it's actually a good one for Black History Month, believe it or not. You can see the boundaries that are set up between two different races that are not far off in the color of their skin. To be honest, I actually thought this was a good one to watch and I liked it.

Check in next week when I look at a very powerful and heavy movie in "Black History Movie Month."