Riz Ahmed shines as a rapper who reconnects with his spiritual roots after suffering a chronic illness.
When Zed (Riz Ahmed) raps, he does it “for the mosque and the mosh pit.” His sharp, feverish bars arrive 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 to pursue his music career from afar. 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.
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.
Questions of heritage and history, of bloodlines and independence, make Mogul Mowgli a sincere and balanced work, at its best in quickfire dream sequences, such as Zed’s visions of the mysterious ‘Toba Tek Singh’. Director Bassam 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 being too sentimental and finds a moving and invigorating conclusion with Ahmed firmly at its thumping heart.
Mogul Mowgli is in cinemas from 30 October; to experience the world of the film, head to mogulmowgli.co.uk
Published 19 Oct 2020
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