I've never seen a film to be that red. No, not even Zhang Yimou's work. Ketan Mehta's “Mirch Masala” (1986) unfolds patiently, albeit with a gradual spiciness of both visual and dramatic layers. At first, we get to see Sonbai by the river, doing her daily errands. She's approached by a tyrannical subedar, who's stroked by her beauty. The desire reaches its climax and the man advances. There won't be a love story out of this, as Sonbai is married; she refuses the dalliance, blatantly rejecting his offer to sleep with him. A slap on the man's cheek. Next thing the woman is on the run, fleeing into the spice factory where other women grind the chilies into a refined powder. The rejected ego hurts the most, thus the man threatens to destroy the whole village.
And so the spectacle begins—a back-and-forth tense drama of men trying to colonize: the space and the women. Set in colonial India, in a remote village among the landscape of chili's petals, Mehta's masterpiece grips the viewer's attention with dense storytelling, gradual foreplay of tension, and incredible juxtapositions of all the emotional reds. The vast image of the chili landscape—an exquisite use of textures, I admit—stands as a fine symbol of the colonial echo, but also strengthens the intensity of terror that we fearfully await throughout the whole course of the film.
“Mirch Masala” is a film that is riveting with its intensity of redness; a tale that both enthralls and infuriates with its allegorical approach to colonial substance, as well as the emancipation from colonial tyranny; and finally, a narrative that regains the agency of women in a manner that is both scrutinizingly poignant and cinematically beautiful. There's nothing mild about Mehta's film and that's the best kind of intensity you might want to expect from the film.
“Mirch Masala” is available on MUBI.
