“Now where are you really from? The question seems simple, but the answers kinda long…” Zed, played by Riz Ahmed, raps these words from the corner of a darkened stage at the intro of “Mogul Mowgli”, this pondering statement permeates through the entirety of this ethnographic, and deeply personal tale of familial resiliency.
Selected as a film for TIFF’s Asia Unbound Special Screenings for Asian Heritage Month, “Mogul Mowgli” provides an intimate look into the experiences of a second generational Pakistani Brit, who is uncovering the weight of their inherited diaspora trauma. Riz Ahmed starred and co-wrote the film with director Bassam Tariq. Tariq explained in an interview with The Upcoming that the film’s story is in many ways based off of both his and Ahmed’s lives, that Zed is an amalgamation of both of their true selves. At first glance the film is about a musician who at the cusp of breakout has their life derailed by an illness. As the plot unfolds Zed’s character develops from a self-defining artistically driven person, to a multi-dimensional man who discovers that what he inherits from the experiences of his family and community are what truly drives him. In an interview with BAFTA Guru, Ahmed focuses on this purpose, explaining that the film stems from the idea of not knowing where you’re going, until you know where you’re coming from.
Riz Ahmed’s portrayal of Zed in “Mogul Mowgli”, a musician whose well being and livelihood are threatened by the deterioration of their body, comes only a year after his highly acclaimed performance in “Sound of Metal”, where his character, a heavy-metal drummer, also has their life altered by the effects of a chronic illness. Celebrated for his memorable and riveting performance of Ruben Stone in “Sound of Metal”, one may be sceptical of Riz Ahmed’s ability to uniquely play another character whose life defining chapter mirrors Ruben’s—this doubt is demolished by Ahmed’s performance of Zed—not an echo from “Sound of Metal” can be heard in “Mogul Mowgli”. While music and illness may seem like the leading similarities between these films, what truly connects their hearts’ centre is the rendering of the complexities of connectedness one feels with their culture and community.
Zed is a British Pakistani hip-hop artist who moves away from his home in England to pursue his music career in New York. Zed presents as a conscious rapper, a type of poetic revolutionary who discusses the detrimental effects caused by the impositions of white settler colonialism, conflicting this passion is his dire need to achieve global recognition and financial success. It is only when he expresses to his girlfriend Bina (Aiysha Hart) of his upcoming world tour that he is called out for being performative in his activist styled lyrics. In a failed attempt to defend the importance of their relationship, Bina questions Zed’s priorities, stating that for someone who raps about home so much, he never sees his family. As if her words were the gust of wind to shift him in a new direction, Zed heads home for the first time in years. What he finds in England is more than his family; memories of his upbringing strike his mind in a consumingly disorienting form of remembrance. From items his father hoards throughout the house, to conversations and traditional practices he has with family and community members, Zed is forced to not only recall the past that he tried to separate himself from, but to accept that in his absence others continued to live within the space he abandoned. After an altercation outside of a Mosque, Zed is knocked unconscious and is hospitalized; when he wakes he finds himself in a body that does not feel like his own. His doctors explain to him that he has a degenerative immune disease, one that is likely hereditary; he is told “your body can’t recognize itself, so it’s attacking itself”, a diagnosis that mirrors his ethnic and cultural cleansing. Since his illness is progressive, Zed’s body only continues to weaken, he loses the ability to walk on his own and can barley hold himself up. His doctors, manager and family help make it clear to him that touring is out of the picture, that his health takes priority. Filled with displaced resentment, Zed verbally takes the emotional weight of his careers’ potential loss out on his family, specifically his father. Regardless of Zed’s harshness towards him, his father continuously works to help him on his path to recovery. Actions Zed initially perceives as overbearing, eventually become unequivocal displays of unconditional love. While recovering, Zed continuously has vivid hallucinations, ones that reveal familial and cultural traumas, while also confronting him with his deeply rooted religious and ethnic shame.
The experiences Zed goes through during his illness are near spiritual. The disease attacks Zed’s body to the point of making him virtually immobile, having him confined to his hospital bed and to his thoughts. To find true healing, Zed must first mend the emotional self harm he had been inflicting on himself since childhood. In his hallucinations he is revisited and haunted by a figure from his childhood who first acts a cultural tie to his Pakistani upbringing, then as a moral guide, and finally as a missing piece to a suppressed memory. Aside from visual hallucinations, Zed also begins hearing religious whispers guiding him towards Islamic prayer. In the most revealing hallucinatory revelations, Zed is faced with convoluted and symbolic physical confrontations, where aggression towards his Pakistani and Islamic identity manifest in a physical form, forcing him to actively face the cultural shame he endlessly tries to contextualize verbally.
Cinematically the hallucination scenes are presented in a vivid magic realism style. These captivating scenes are filled with dizzying camera movement or suspenseful stillness; when the camera movement is frantic, Zed is typically unraveling suppressed memories, while when movement is focused the hallucinations target his subconscious to pull him back to his cultural roots. The colours in each hallucination both define the mood of the scene, while also putting emphasis on specific characters or objets, pulling the viewer closer into the unraveling of Zed’s tangled thoughts. Colour in these hallucination scenes are deeply purposeful; vibrant colours display intricate detail to his cultural and religious ties, as seen on head dresses, masks, and even on Zed’s hospital gown. In contrast, when scenes show flashes of dull and dark tones they are representative of his physical pain being a mirror to the pain his people felt during traumatic land partition.
“Mogul Mowgli”s narrative is unique to the screen. The story is one with deeply rooted politics, family drama, self-doubt, and misdirected anguish. Zed’s experiences as a child of immigrants, one who is fighting the dichotomy of dealing with racist barriers and inherited trauma, while attempting to find themselves within a culture they can’t seem to fit into, is uniquely and authentically captured through the lens of creators Ahmed and Tariq. “Mogul Mowgli”’s artistic collaboration between Riz Ahmed and Bassam Tariq birthed a rich and honest piece of work that creates a compelling and engrossing tale of discovering how to proudly claim ones own identity in its entirety.
Score: (B+)
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