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When I was a teenage boy, I got sick one day and stayed home. While laying in bed, I turned on HBO, and just let it play. I didn’t care what came on, I just wanted some talking in the background. Well, after a few hours, the movie Mississippi Masala came on.
I had never heard of this movie before, and I really didn’t have an interest in watching it, that was until I saw the name Denzel Washington pop up.
I remember thinking, “How is it possible that he’s in a movie I never heard of?”
So, when the film opened on this Indian family, I was really confused. But then I started to appreciate how beautiful the cinematography was, and how colorful the film was.
I had never seen Africa look this beautiful on film. When American movies show Africa, it’s usually not presented as a desirable place. There is a joke in the film in which a African American asks, “Does Africa look like it did in Shaka Zulu?”
Which brings me to the brilliant dichotomy of this film.
Mississippi Masala is about an Indian family, who were brought over by the British, when they ruled over Africa. But the next generation of the family was thrown out of the country and robbed of their African property by dictator Idi Amin.
Forced to flee, the family eventually ends up in Mississippi of places.
It is here were Mina, played by Sarita Choudhury meets, and eventually falls in love with Demetrius, played by Denzel Washington.
It is here where the movie picks up it’s intensity as we quickly learn that despite living in Africa, and even having close friends that are black, Mina’s family despises her choice of relationship partially due to the fact that Demetrius is not Indian, but more so, due that he is black.
So, we have plot where dark skinned Indians (by their own accord) from Africa, who have never been to India, hate on a black man in America who has never been to Africa.
This film does a great job of showing the fake alliances, and division that exist against among all dark-skinned people of the world.
In the end, love, and a desire to lead a new life, and start something new win out, and Demetrius and Mina run away together.
Mina’s father eventually returns to his house in Africa where he was once so happy, to learn a lesson of his own.
The war is over.
Idi Amin is gone.
But so is his best friend.
So is his family.
His house and that land in Africa, it’s just a place.
Home is where the heart is.
Great movie, great message, Suffering knows no color. Love is blind. Home is where the heart is.
A+ film.
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From the manufacturer
Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington star in Mira Nair’s bighearted romance, which tackles complicated issues of colorism and culture clash
The vibrant cultures of India, Uganda, and the American South come together in Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala, a luminous look at the complexities of love in the modern melting pot.
Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda by the dictatorship of Idi Amin, twentysomething Mina (Sarita Choudhury) spends her days cleaning rooms in an Indian-run motel in Mississippi. When she falls for the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius (Denzel Washington), their passionate romance challenges the prejudices of both of their families and exposes the rifts between the region’s Indian and African American communities.
Tackling thorny issues of racism, colorism, culture clash, and displacement with bighearted humor and keen insight, Nair serves up a sweet, sexy, and deeply satisfying celebration of love’s power.
Director-Approved Special Edition Features
- New 4K digital restoration
- New audio commentary featuring Nair
- New interviews with Choudhury, screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and cinematographer Ed Lachman
- And more
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A Scene from Mississippi Masala
The Criterion Collection
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