Mira Nair, Sarita Choudhury, and Ed Lachman on Mississippi Masala | NYFF59
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- čas přidán 27. 09. 2021
- Director Mira Nair, lead actress Sarita Choudhury, and cinematographer Ed Lachman discuss Mississippi Masala, a Revivals selection at NYFF59, with writer Jhumpa Lahiri. The free talk, presented by HBO and sponsored by TCM took place at Damrosch Park following an outdoor screening of the new restoration from Janus Films.
Denzel Washington stars opposite Sarita Choudhury in Mira Nair’s second fiction feature, which endures as a seminal screen romance of the 1990s. Choudhury is Mina, a Ugandan Indian from Kampala whose family leaves Uganda after the implementation of Idi Amin’s policy of forcefully expelling all Asians from the country. They wind up in Greenwood, Mississippi, living with relatives and trying to reconcile the trauma of their involuntary exile with assimilating to American culture. Some 17 years pass before Mina falls for a self-employed carpet cleaner, Demetrius (Washington), and their romance puts them in conflict with the local Black and Indian-American communities-not to mention Mina’s family. At once a powerful parable and a deeply personal work, Mississippi Masala remains an incisive examination of race relations and the tension between passion and tradition.
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This talk is sponsored by Turner Classic Movies.
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This is seriously one of the best movies with some of the best soundtracks. I watched this movie last night and my soul is still lost in that movie. Great job Ms Mira!!!
Still remains one of my favorite Denzel Washington movies. One of the last times we saw him in a role of vulnerability. And the chemistry between him and Sarita was something you could FEEL watching. They were electric together.
One of my all time favorites. Just watched it again. Sarita and Denzel forever.
Mira and Sarita should come together again....they both create magic together
I personally think the movie was ground breaking in so many ways, and it demonstrated so many layers in relationships , socially conscious film in every way. The scene at the bayou will forever take the viewer to an intimate sort of natural beauty even inspiring thoughts of the native american history mississippi carries from ancient times. It's just a very intricate intelligent film 🎥 well done . Bravo 👏.
Its so cool to hear that denzel essentially took the role because he knew this was something he'd probably not get a second chance to do. But now after all this time, its a bit sad too because he was essentially right. I havent really seen denzel play a character quite like Demetrius, let alone seen a story like Mississippi masala in movies since.
Couldn't have said it better. This may have been the very last time he wasn't "DENZEL WASHINGTON"...and got to be the character, not Denzel Washington playing the character. He was VULNERABLE in a way we haven't seen since, even in movies meant to be portray that like Flight. He was subtle but excellent as always.
Absolutely. Denzel Washington became a box office leading man, but because he carried so much being a black leading actor his approach to being a romantic lead was complex. He talked about never wanting to disrespect his wife or African American women in general so I feel like he never fully allowed himself to be vulnerable opposite actresses who weren't black. This movie precedes that, so I feel like we do get to see a different side to Denzel.
This movie was extraordinary, easily one of my favorite movies because it's so luscious and layered and intimate.
The question asked by the film student regarding how MM would be different in 2022 given the political, social and cultural climate was an excellent question. I wish Mira had at least tried to answer parts of it.
Hello
Something I have been in search for quite sometime is a connection with somebody that goes beyond vanity. It's very hard to do in this day and age. People can be, somewhat very superficial.
On my quest to achieve this I have learnt a lot about human nature. It seems to me that those who are not given traits such as beauty or being wealthy are some of the nicest, kindest and generous people.
While the "gorgeous" and well off seem to be the most arrogant and greedy people out there. Of course that's not to say there aren't beautiful kind people out there.
I've been in the process of change for a while now and I have made some decent changes but don't you just hate it when people can't let go of your past mistakes.
I saw your profile and it intrigued me. I wanted to learn more about who you are and what type of path you would like on in life.
Can we talk?
This is a great interview. I would have loved hearing from the other actors, too -- Roshan Seth (played Mina's father), Sharmila Tagore (played Mina's mother), Konga Mbandu (played Okelo), Charles S. Dutton (played Tyrone), Tico Wells (played Dexter), etc. Sadly, many of the actors are no longer alive, and Mira mentioned a few of these individuals by name. Each created a brilliant character in this brilliant ensemble. I first saw this gem of a movie when it was released in 1991, and again recently, experiencing and re-experiencing the same inspiration. The emotional and physical landscapes (in particular, of Uganda as well as the "backyard" scene of character Williben's (played by the late Joe Seneca) birthday family celebration) are exquisite and bring me to tears. This film is truly timeless in its range of subjects and the intricacies and complexities of personal choices that defy imposed norms and boundaries erected from human suffering. I cannot seem to find among the movie's listed cast of actors the man who played "Granddaddy." While his role was passed with the blink of any eye, he added such dimension and context with his few given lines and sheer presence. Does anyone know the actor's name and his life story? As to the movie portrayal of romance between the characters "Demetrius" (played by Denzel Washington) and "Mina" (played by Sarita Choudhury), to which the director Mira Nair in this interview commented about Denzel's initial seeming lack of magnetism, I cannot help but imagine (my assumption) that Denzel's devoted marriage and having twins born either during or towards the end of this film's production may have led to his reticence felt by Mira Nair. In the end, I felt (as everyone here describes) a wholly authentic magnetism between "Demetrius" and "Mira" that was as intimate as ever and has remained with me all these years.
We loved everything about serita & denzel.. I watch this movie many times still in love. ❤😂🎉
I have watched that movie so many times. One of my favorites.
Stubble across this movie, and realize this is a great movie. I truly love ❤️ this movie. Blessings for all the people who participated in aspects of this movie. ❤😂😢😮😅😊
I simply loved this movie. Perfectly cast.
I've always loved this movie, in part because it resonates with certain aspects of my personal life. The plotline is a fairly paint-by-numbers Romeo & Juliet narrative, built around two stunningly gorgeous actors as leads. What's not to love about that? The infamous "phone sex" scene, with scantily clad Denzel and Sarita lounging sensually beneath their respective sheets, both camera angles looking down at the protagonists, making the viewer imagine he is the top in a coupling with Denzel, or Sarita, or both, that scene could make an entire theater swoon with lust.
Yet what I love about this film is the subtle ways in which Mira injects her unique blend of cultural and historic details to enhance the "spiciness" of the telling, a true masala. Sadly, some of the details, I think, go over the heads of most Americans watching the film. For example, Meena's family considers itself native of Uganda. They are in fact more African than Demetrius or anybody in his family, and her family's history is connected to slavery at essentially the same timeline as Demetrius. This "African-ness" is contrasted by Mira for dramatic purposes with the self-conscious and intentional "Indian-ness" of Meena's extended family, who chooses to elevate the latter over the former when they oppose the relationship, adding spice to the usual Romeo & Juliet power vectors. There is the childhood friendship of Jay and Okelo to create additional irony, and the foreshadowing when the child Mina kisses her African friend tenderly as a goodbye. Mira also touches on things like colourism in the Indian community, substance abuse, the sexual tensions that can accompany an arranged marriage, and misogyny/gender roles in the Indian-American community. Plus, Mira infused the character of Meena with a piquant rebelliousness and headstrong insistence on following her passion and her heart's truth in ways that were feminist and sex-positive ahead of its time in 1991. In these ways, it was a refreshed, thoroughly modern re-telling of Romeo & Juliet, without descending into the maudlin, silly, or just mundane as some of the recent iterations of this classic trope have done.
Denzel and Sarita were the perfect couple as leads. I'm aware that Mira faced some controversy over casting decisions in other films, but in this one she gets it just right. The playful innocence of their flirtation in the bayou scene, and the polite but sincere way Demetrius asks Meena's permission before kissing her the first time, it's sweet without being the least bit saccharine. That scene in particular is played so well you almost feel as if the two actors were in fact falling in love in that moment. A 10 out of 10 in terms of "first kiss" movie scenes. Overall, both of them are blisteringly handsome/stunningly beautiful. As a cultural milestone, one of the points of significance of this movie is that it marks one of the first times in American cinema with co-leads of color who are celebrated as gorgeous humans, as opposed to "gorgeous for a black man" or "gorgeous for an Asian woman".
In the comments in this clip, Mira talks quite a lot about Africa, but the over-arching theme of diaspora in this movie is so quintessentially American. America is, if nothing else, a nation of almost constant diaspora. We are a nation where a young couple will load everything they own into a Calistoga and venture across the continent looking for a new life, leaving extended family behind. Where young people leave their small towns and extended families and settle in cities, meeting other young people from other cultures and ethnic groups, casting off the mores of their elders. My small home town was a place of post-WWII immigrants, mostly from Northern Europe, working hard blue collar jobs in extractive industry. The grandchildren -- my generation -- moved away and a great many married brown people. Their/our children are now married or mated across a rainbow spectrum. Mira paints Romeo & Juliet with this brush, cloaking the two lovers in the fabric of diaspora. Joseph Conrad talked about the freedom of writing in English where it was not his first language. In the same way, I feel Mira grocks something about America, or "American-ness", that another film maker would not see. Again, this adds a level of spiciness to the traditional Romeo & Juliet themes. In the original R&J, the immutable, institutional positions of the protagonists' families is a central plot element and ultimately drives the tragedy of its ending. Mira flips that on its head, exposing how ephemeral and porous these institutions can and often should be, creating the possibility of the happily ever after we crave for this couple.
As much as I love this film, I do feel that the sub-plot about Jay's Quixotic effort to find some form of reconciliation with Uganda occupies both too large of a role in the film, and too small. As a viewer, I leave this film every time wanting either more development of that plotline -- because I find it genuinely intriguing and worth exploring -- or less -- because it distracts from the main plotline of the love between Demetrius and Meena. As it ended up in the final cut, it is sort of the anti-Goldilocks element, too much and yet too little. Also, I think the effort to lever Jay's experience in Uganda to explain his dislike of African Americans in general, and Demetrius in particular, is both glib and dishonest vis-a-vis the racism exhibited toward back Americans by Indians living in the US.
As part of this, every time I watch this film, I find myself increasingly disappointed by the ending. Clearly it's an effort to suggest that Jay experienced an epiphany of sorts in Uganda, but to what end? That Meena and Demetrius live happily ever after? That Jay achieves some sort of redemption after allowing Okelo to die without every hearing from Jay? That Jay will finally become a partner in marriage to Kinnu (as opposed to the brooding, almost autistically obsessed boor he has been throughout most of the film)? Short stories often end with questions, but a feature-length film ought to tie up its plot elements. The overarching feeling here is that the ending suffers from some ham-fisted editing decisions pushed down in the boardroom from the producer level to shorten the overall length. It stubs off like an amputated digit. The protagonists of this film are Meena and Demetrius, not Jay and Uganda, or the (by now absent) Okelo. Part of the radiance of this film is the beauty of the couple together. The rhythm and harmony, both visual and emotional, that Denzel and Sarita create on screen is magic. The film owes it to its viewers to show this couple in a denouement: riding off to Biloxi, or Indianola, or Los Angeles, for a better life. Or settling in Greenwood with a white picket fence and a couple of nut-brown blasian babies. Or something. It's a love story, dammit, and we Americans love our beautiful movie stars and our happily ever after.
Great Analysis, I suggest you should start blogging or CZcams movie reviews I'd definitely support you.
@@wandabhala8516 Thank you
I love this movie.
Very good movie