Mississippi Masala

Presented on a 35mm print courtesy of the Yale Film Archive. 

Fresh off the success of her 1988 feature film debut Salaam Bombay!, director Mira Nair returned in 1991 with Mississippi Masala, a landmark romantic drama that would set the bar for a new decade of independent filmmaking.

Nair’s ambitious narrative, spanning multiple decades, generations, and continents, introduces us to the story not through the perspective of Mina, the romantic lead, but through the lens of her father. We open on a dimly lit dirt road in Uganda in 1972: Idi Amin has risen to power, and Asians are expelled from Uganda at his behest. Harry Patel, a once-successful lawyer, is displaced with his family; first to London, then to rural Mississippi, where his wife runs a liquor store, his daughter works housekeeping in a sleepy roadside motel, and he whittles away his time launching lawsuits against the country of Uganda for the return of his property.

Enter Harry’s daughter, Mina (played by the striking Sarita Choudhury), stifled by the circumstances of her upbringing and the traditional expectations of her parents, and desperate for a new perspective. The chance at a new beginning arrives in the form of a car accident: she rear ends a work van belonging to Demetrius (the devastatingly handsome Denzel Washington), a carpet cleaner with an eldest son complex, catalyzing their whirlwind romance.

Nair and director of photography Ed Lachman illuminate Mississippi in a dazzling spectrum of color, generating a lush visual texture nearly as swoonworthy as the ineffable chemistry between the two leads. Laid bare across this sunburnt landscape, however, are the harsh realities of the worlds that Mina and Demetrius inhabit: incidents of colorism, racism, and political displacement inform each character’s story with a creeping insistence. Here is where Nair sticks the landing in her complex balancing act: against the odds of prejudice and distrust, love prevails. (Mira Nair, USA, United Kingdom, 1991, 118 minutes, 35mm)

This event is free and open to the public. Doors open thirty minutes prior to showtime.