Zed (Riz Ahmed) is a British-Pakistani rapper on the brink of stardom. After plugging away for years, bouncing from venue to venue across Europe, he’s finally given the opportunity to be an opener for what could be the biggest tour of his career. Before departing on his jaunt, he decides to return home, for the first time in two years, to visit his family. The homecoming turns sour, however, when Zed is diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. He soon becomes a shell of himself, losing his basic capacities for movement and, possibly, his chance at stardom. Co-written by Ahmed and Bassam Tariq, and directed by Tariq himself, “Mogul Mowgli” is a tidy, yet surreal drama that features another enthralling performance by Ahmed.
Fans of Darius Marder’s “Sound of Metal,” wherein Ahmed played a metal drummer who suddenly loses his hearing, spiraling into an existential crisis, will see parallels with Zed. But the two aren’t wholly comparable. In ‘Metal,’ Ahmed’s character dealt with the incorrect, ingrained belief of a disability as a defect. Zed’s dread runs just as deep but into different channels: For years he’s been running from his family and culture, haunted by the memories of his dad’s failed venture. He’s also insecure, has commitment issues, and is competitive to a fault.
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When Zed arrives home, he seems like an outsider. Others chide him for forgetting certain Muslim customs. He’s not just been physically running away from his past, but spiritually too. He’s a bundle of professional insecurities. For instance: He refuses to root for a fellow Muslim rapper named RPG, even though the younger artist looks up to him. The relationship with his girlfriend, Bina (Aiysha Hart), is disintegrating under the weight of his romantic insecurities. When stacked on top of each other, these instabilities seem to break him. At first, his legs stiffen, and then his body betrays him. “His body doesn’t recognize itself so it’s attacking itself,” a doctor explains.
The biggest thrills of “Mogul Mowgli” often happen on the aesthetic front. Zed’s hallucinations, flashbacks to his childhood shot evocatively by Anika Summerson, wherein he sees the eerie floral head dressed specter, Toba Tek Singh, and an ethereal death-ridden train car are terrifying. But the film is missing far too much screen time to fully build out Zed’s physical decline in relation to his personal foibles.
The relationship between Zed and his father (Alyy Khan) is one such complex relationship that’s more filled in by Ahmed and Khan’s contrasting styles than the writing itself. See, his dad has cycled through failed businesses and Zed doesn’t want to fail as he did. In Zed’s flashbacks, we see his father’s fledgling restaurant fade into chaos. Because Zed experienced these memories as a kid, however, we can only see it from a child’s limited perspective. There’s so much meat within the father’s backstory, an immigrant opening his own business only to be cursed by its collapse, that to leave the father’s experiences at a distance, thereby barely informing us of this multigenerational turmoil, feels like a mistake. Still, there’s enough to chew on to easily digest these rougher contours.
While Ahmed gained plenty of plaudits for his turn in “Sound of Metal,” his real-life background as a hip-hop artist feels geared, slightly better, toward Zed. Here, Ahmed further establishes himself as one of our premier leading men, a performer capable of matching the physical and the internal machinations of his characters for exacting, vulnerable portrayals. The rhymes that Zed seems to repeat, even in his sleep — such as “I ain’t got roots to put down. I’m pulling the weeds up…What I’m growing don’t need love. Where I’m going don’t need love” — oscillates in intensity depending on his mental and bodily state.
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By the film’s ambiguous conclusion — Does he live or is this a case of wish fulfillment? — Zed embraces his family yet chooses his own path, away from his culture, once again. He takes the Western “poison,” so he might live. While “Mogul Mowgli” could do with a bit more story, in the waning minutes, the bare conclusion is more than enough to satisfy. Tariq’s “Mogul Mowgli” is enrapturing, revelatory, and at all times, a nightmarish accounting of the bonds that make us, but can easily break us as well. [B+]
“Mogul Mowgli” arrives in select theaters on September 3.