Mogul Mowgli (2020 | United Kingdom | 90 minutes | Bassam Tariq)
My favorite film of 2020 was Sound of Metal, and I’d already been a huge fan of Riz Ahmed’s for the last decade: ever since he knocked me over starring in my second-favorite movie of 2010, Four Lions. So it’s no surprise that I jumped at the chance to make Ahmed’s latest, Mogul Mowgli – wherein an up-and-coming rapper is waylaid by the sudden onset of symptoms of an autoimmune disorder and must move back in with his family – one of my first viewing choices of SIFF’s 2021 virtual slate.
Ahmed co-wrote the film’s script with director Bassam Tariq, and his character, nicknamed Zed, is a rapper whose parents emigrated before his birth from Pakistan to England. It would be easy to read this film as autobiographical, as these are facts of Ahmed’s life as well, and the film’s major themes of confusion, longing, and alienation from one’s family and cultural identity as a member of the South Asian diaspora are extremely common ones that show up throughout his impressive oeuvre as both an actor/filmmaker and a musician.
In fact, many of Zed’s raps are Ahmed’s own from previous releases. (The film is not a musical in the sense of characters breaking into song in a fantastical way to serve as exposition or dialogue, but it does have lots of musical performances built into its narrative.) One particularly poignant piece also appears on his 2020 concept album as well as its accompanying short film which he also co-wrote, both titled The Long Goodbye. “Toba Tek Singh”, which is central to a brilliantly layered and emotionally crucial moment in the film as well as the seed of a recurring theme throughout, also comes from that album.
But calling it a semi-autobiographical film is letting Mogul Mowgli off too easy. It’s so much more than that. There is undeniably a lot of Riz in Zed, but there’s also a new character we haven’t seen from him before: a brand new mix of vulnerability and stubbornness; a slightly new angle on the difficulties of reconciling assimilation into Western culture with honoring his family’s traumatic migrations and his Muslim faith; even a whole new physicality. To watch this film with the take-away that it’s basically Riz Ahmed playing himself is to completely overlook what a multifaceted, empathetic, and imaginative performer and writer he is.
Such a take, as well as comparisons to Sound of Metal (with which this film does share many surface-level similarities, both being films featuring Riz Ahmed as a musician who has his life derailed by a medical condition which he at first stubbornly refuses to acknowledge) would also ignore the impressive level of craft brought by co-writer and director Bassam Tariq. Far from a straightforward linear narrative, the film takes frequent detours into flashback, memory, and fantasy; the visual style is distinctly cinematic, rather than realist. These heightened-reality flourishes help serve to push the viewer into Zed’s increasingly-unstable state of mind, as well as symbolically communicating the fractured and historically-heavy burden many British Asians carry.
SIFF’s presentation of this film is accompanied by an enlightening and enjoyable 30-minute pre-recorded Q&A with Tariq and Ahmed, hosted by SIFF programmer Dan Doody. They talk about the genesis of this project and watching its focus evolve even as they began location scouting and pre-production, eventually coalescing around “that contradiction in the self, the fact that you might be spurred on by the same thing that you’re running away from.” They also brought up that the root of Zed’s affliction, both physical and emotional, is “the inability of the body to recognize itself”. “An identity crisis played out on a molecular level” is about as brilliant a metaphor as I’m aware of, and even better still: it actually works.
Mogul Mowgli is “sold out” for individual ticket purchases according to SIFF’s “selling quickly” list; views still remain available for passholders, although passholder views are listed as limited for this film as well. So if you’re a passholder thinking about it, don’t delay!
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