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After the breakout success of Nightcrawler, Riz Ahmed has constantly been on the precipice of something much bigger for a few years now. In Mogul Mowgli he works with director Bassam Tariq to co-write the story of Zed, a British-Pakistani rapper who is about to get his breakthrough shot opening for a more prominent artist when suddenly he collapses in an alleyway, and after tests are run it is determined he has an autoimmune disease that is literally eating his muscles making it impossible to anything as simple as walking.
Zed uses his Pakistani background to write his music but seems to try to keep his distance from his familial history. A relative his own age chastises him for making his stage name for Westerners instead of the traditional one given to him by his parents. While experiencing medical hallucinations in the hospital his mind tries to confront the story of his father who fled India for Pakistan after the partition of the two countries. Zed is haunted by Toba Tek Singh, a man with flowers hanging in front of his face obscuring him. Singh shares the same name as the influential short story written in 1955 that tells a political satire of insane asylum patients being traded from Pakistan to India. Singh chants his name over and over again and laughs at Zed’s predicament as he lays helplessly in bed or while in physical therapy.
The film is quite ambitious during the hallucination sequences adding mind bending sounds and colours to the screen as you question Zed’s own sanity. Ahmed is a terrific actor showing his range as his body is betraying him and he is trying to deal with the career ramifications of not going on tour. The film wants to be so much more than it is, but some pieces fall a bit flat. There is an end reconciliation scene between Ahmed and his father played by Alvy Khan that really grounds the film and adds a ton of needed emotion. Ahmed wrote all his own raps basing it on similar lyrical content he already producers as an artist. You want this to be his big mainstream breakthrough, but it falls just a bit short despite being a very well made film.
Mogul Mowgli was seen during the 2020 Cinéfest Sudbury International Film Festival. Thank you to the festival for the press pass. Mogul Mowgli will be released in the UK on October 30th, 2020.
