Pi@LFF: Review of 'Mogul Mowgli' by Bassam Tariq
Featured in the BFI London Film Festival 2020, ‘Mogul Mowgli’ by Bassam Tariq is a stark portrayal of generational conflict, familial love and displacement.
Source: BFI
“Mogul Mowgli” follows a British-Pakistani rapper Zed (portrayed by Riz Ahmed) from the heights of New York success to the shocking and debilitating effects of a degenerative neurological disease that affects the muscles in his body. Just as Zed gets offered the supporting tour of his dreams, his body begins to fail him. This is a raw examination of a devastating loss and the ties that bring us together. “Mogul Mowgli” asks the questions: can you find your own identity while being pulled between two cultures? How do you deal with the overwhelming distress of losing everything you have worked for?
Bassam Tariq’s film achieves a dichotomy of both a dreamlike and a nightmarish quality. There is a constant retrospective of Zed’s father Bashir (Alyy Khan) on the train from India to Pakistan as a young boy. This memory infiltrates present-day shots, as the light and dust lands on Zed’s face in the hospital. This flashback shows the different experiences of first and second-generation immigrants in Britain, but also the strong link of trauma and history passed from generation to generation. Zed is constantly visited by Toba Tek Singh, a man with colourful flowers over his face who taunts him about the distance between himself and his family’s culture.
The cinematography is subtle but effective; Ahmed is often on the fringes of the shot with the setting overwhelming him. As he struggles to walk, his feet enter the top of the shot and the hospital wing dominates over his frame as the condition begins to take over his body and his life. However, there is a lightness to the dialogue, both in the rapping and also in small moments of humour between family members, that telling banter between cousins, and between father and son.
There are strikingly extreme close-ups of Zed and his father throughout the film, with a specifically arresting moment arising when they are praying. Through these similar shots a generational link is created from father to son, and the film constantly reminds us that “legacies outlast love” and questions who we are without children. This topic is further critiqued as the experimental medical treatment for Zed’s condition includes the possibility of becoming infertile.
Source: BFI
This is some of Riz Ahmed’s most convincing and effectual work. Also a co-writer on the film, Ahmed moves effortlessly from egotistical rapper to vulnerable patient struggling with the ending of his dreams, the cultural weight of his father’s expectations and the loss of control over his own body. Zed is attempting to find comfort in his familial roots, while also managing his own conflict with his family’s culture and superstitions. This is explored when his father pushes alternative medicine such as cupping to heal his son, saying that he doesn’t want any Western poisonous medicine in his son’s body, especially if the new experimental surgery leads to infertility.
This displacement and disconnection is also shown through the lyrics of the track “Where You From” that Zed performs at a gig. The lyrics state: “They ever ask you where you from?/ The question seems simple but the answer’s kinda long./ I could tell ‘em Wembley but I don’t think that’s what they want/ But I don’t wanna tell ‘em more ‘cause anything I say is wrong.” This follows a trend of BME communities requesting people to stop asking where they come from in a bid to confront casual racism and microaggressions. The song also questions Britain’s colonial past, “Britain's where I'm born and I love a cup of tea and that/ But tea ain't from Britain, it's from where my DNA is at” and references Commonwealth and South Asian involvement in World War Two, “it's fertilised by the brown bodies fought for you in the war”.
In a cultural climate where politicians such as British minister Priti Patel are tightening immigration measures and asylum seekers are filmed live on BBC News dangerously crossing the ocean, Riz Ahmed explores the duality of living in a country that is simultaneously your home and a place in which you live as a stranger. “Now everybody everywhere want their country back/ If you want me back to where I'm from then bruv I need a map.”
“Mogul Mowgli” is a film that affects in an unexpected way, opening possibilities of vulnerability and the examination of selfhood. The close of the film may seem somewhat unfulfilling to many, as Zed’s condition improves but he does not return to his previous rapper lifestyle and success. However, to many, the beautiful scene between father and son and the acceptance of the blending of two cultures, both in music and between generations, is all the reconciliation one could ever need. This film is but a snippet of a person’s life and proves that life continues even after tragedy and that finding your home and your roots is a continual and evolving process.