To this day, whenever I see Sarita Choudhury, like I did twice this past year in The Green Knight and After Yang, my first thought is “Oh yeah she was in Mississippi Masala with Denzel Washington.” That film is largely overlooked in his career, not so much hers even though her career is also quite distinguished. It’s actually still quite good 31 years since it was released, and is worth a revisit. That makes The Criterion Collection’s 4K restoration perfectly timed.
The second feature film by the great Mira Nair, Mississippi Masala follows a Black man from the American south and an Indian woman who find love, but also a clash of cultures and tense race relations, in Mississippi. It’s such a beautiful, colorful movie and it’s going to look even better thanks to the folks at Criterion.
Definitely check out Mississippi Masala‘s 4K restoration when it hits New York theaters on April 15th, then Los Angeles on April 22nd, followed by a national rollout.
The vibrant cultures of India, Uganda, and the American South are blended and simmered into a rich and fragrant fusion feast in Mira Nair’s luminous look at the complexities of love in the modern melting pot. Years after her Indian family was forced to flee their home in Uganda by the dictatorship of Idi Amin, twentysomething Mina (Sarita Choudhury) finds herself helping to run a motel in the faraway land of Mississippi. It’s there that a passionate romance with the charming Black carpet cleaner Demetrius (Denzel Washington) challenges the prejudices of their conservative families and exposes the rifts between the region’s Indian and African American communities. Tackling thorny issues of racism, colorism, culture clash, and displacement with big-hearted humor and keen insight, Nair serves up a sweet, sexy, and radical celebration of love’s power to break down the barriers between us.
