Mogul Mowgli – first look review

Riz Ahmed, actor, MC, and all-round top tal­ent, takes cen­tre stage in Bas­sam Tariq’s Mogul Mowgli. Act­ing as co-writer, pro­duc­er and in the star­ring role of Zed, Ahmed plays an ambi­tious British rap­per so intent on mov­ing for­ward that he nev­er stops to look back.

When Zed raps, he does it ​“for the mosque and the mosh pit,” sharp, fever­ish bars with the tenac­i­ty of slam poet­ry and the weight of his world with­in them. His life is in his lyrics; the racism he’s faced, his strug­gles with iden­ti­ty, the endur­ing ques­tion of ​“where are you real­ly from?”

He finds space in his music to inves­ti­gate these feel­ings but Zed hasn’t been home to his own fam­i­ly in two years, choos­ing instead to hide out in the States and pur­sue his music career there. Only the chance to sup­port anoth­er musi­cian on a Euro­pean tour, and a sep­a­ra­tion from his emo­tion­al­ly dis­tant girl­friend Bina, sends him on a return trip to London.

Back at his par­ents’ home, Zed is forced to re-engage with the life he’s dis­tanced him­self from, ​“the busi­ness of British­ness” (as he him­self raps) in the Pak­istani dias­po­ra. There are plen­ty of sou­venirs of his youth in the house, notably the t‑shirts and aprons bear­ing the logos of his father’s failed busi­ness ven­tures, and when his uncle tells a sto­ry about being chased by skin­heads in his own ado­les­cence, Zed inter­rupts with cheeky com­ments about how the tale has changed since he last heard it.

When his father is asked to recall the hor­rors of the jour­ney he made from India to Pak­istan dur­ing the par­ti­tion in 1947, Zed becomes guard­ed, per­haps afraid of what he might learn. A sud­den ill­ness and Zed’s hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion opens this door even fur­ther, with his career on the line and the notion of lega­cy, in many forms, at stake.

These ques­tions of her­itage and his­to­ry, of blood­lines and inde­pen­dence, make Mogul Mowgli a sin­cere and bal­anced work, at its best in quick­fire dream sequences, Zed’s visions of the mys­te­ri­ous ​‘Toba Tek Singh’, and impas­sioned moments under the stage lights. Tariq beau­ti­ful­ly cap­tures the tex­tures of Zed’s world and his father’s mem­o­ries that infil­trate his new under­stand­ing of his life: the dust, ash­es, talc, spices, crushed flowers.

A few shifts in tone feel occa­sion­al­ly jar­ring, but the film steers away from too sen­ti­men­tal an approach and finds a mov­ing and invig­o­rat­ing con­clu­sion with Ahmed firm­ly at its thump­ing heart.