‘Mississippi Masala’ and Its Meditations on Home, Identity and Love Without Borders

By Lulu Chatterjee

Mississippi Masala (1992), directed by Mira Nair, is a romantic comedy-drama about love and race that is as charming as it is poignant. While the film was released over three decades ago, a stunning 4K restoration from Criterion played in theaters in the spring of 2022. After muddled distribution rights made the film largely inaccessible for years, the restoration of Nair’s story has reached a new generation of moviegoers. It continues to be groundbreaking for its decentering of whiteness without sermonizing audiences on race politics — normalizing representation and diversity on the silver screen.

The film follows Mina (Sarita Choudhury) and Demetrius (Denzel Washington) and their romance that unfolds in the Southern town of Greenwood, Mississippi. Mina’s father, Jay (Roshan Seth), is forced to pack up his family and life in Uganda under dictator Idi Amin and start a motel business in Mississippi. Mina and Demetrius fall head over heels for each other despite their families’ racial differences. Nair intricately weaves a story that has stood the test of time through these characters and the feuds between their families.

When audiences meet Mina and Demetrius in a heart-fluttering meet cute, a new dimension is added to Nair’s questions of identity and belonging. Mina, who has never been to India, and Demetrius, who has never seen Africa, are most relatable to today’s audiences who grapple with these same questions of feeling tied between two communities, teetering along the “hierarchy of color.” Nair describes it as inspiration for the story. Washington and Choudhury portray their internal conflict between being tethered to their cultural identities and wanting to break free from societal expectations with charisma and subtlety. They are responsible children with strong family values but rebel against the borders set before them for a seemingly impossible love.

Nair’s music choices in this film correspond powerfully to the plurality of cultural identities in Mississippi Masala. The film’s opening credits take place against the journey of a map, depicting Mina and her family’s move from Uganda to Mississippi. The camera travels slowly up to northern Africa, through France and England, to the soundtrack of a classical Indian flute. Once the camera hits the Atlantic Ocean, we’re met with the riffing of piano keys, the humming of a harmonica — the sultry blues of Mississippi. This shift in music reinforces the idea that cultural identity is always a conglomeration of influences. The complexities of Mina and Demetrius as characters are represented not only through the way they’re written but also through the fluidity of the soundtrack and the elements of fusion that tie into their cultural landscapes. 

The feuds between the two families depict the unexpected similarities between Indian and black communities most explicitly through a heated confrontation between Demetrius and Jay, where Demetrius shoots, pointing at his face: “I know you and your daughter ain’t but a few shades from this right here. That I know.” This exchange, along with many others, confronts the ugly sides of these relations while emphasizing the need for solidarity among minority groups. 

Placing the histories of enslaved people in the US and colonized subjects of the British beside each other in this story is a level of nuance that continues to be remarkable and rare in today’s film industry. As audiences see Mina and Demetrius frolicking about in a cotton field during the credits, we’re forced to wonder if this love is possible in American society. Regardless of the answer, the timelessness of this story is what keeps new viewers coming back to the spicy, dreamy, bright, and layered world in Nair’s film.