The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • 84

1 'Masala is rewarding, modern 'Romeo victims of racism. Here, the aging The critics are hurling raves! Ho way! Hfay! QQU By Stephen Hunter I tell you "Mississippi Masala" is a syncopation of droll racial ironies set against the complex tapestry of our trou bled times, you probably won't want to see It because I will have made it sound like a kind of medicine. If I tell you It's an amazement maybe you will. And it is an amazement. And it is a syncopation of droll racial Ironies set against the complex tapestry of our troubled times.

It's about the victims of racism who confront and conflict with and, occasionally, connect with each other In the awkward shadow of their oppressors. White people are barely visible; the movie Is set on the bottom rungs of society in Greenville, unseen and unvlslted by the burghers of the new south or the mandarins of the old. But among the people of color, life teems with possibility, confusion, Joy and pain. The color of these people is brown-black, and all are victims: it's Just that some of the brown-black are African-Americans, and some are African-Indians all are American citizens. All are many thousands of miles and many centuries from a motherland.

All are in a sense exiles scrambling for survival and NOW SHOWING LOEWS S-STAR CINEMAS Reisterstown Rd. Plaza 358-6656 LOEWS GLEN BURN IE 7 Blvd. at Ritchie Hwy. 761-0300 LOEWS VALLEY CENTRES Owings Mills, MO 363-4194 PERRY HALL MOVIES Perry Hal. MD 256-6134 UNITED ARTISTS HARBOR PARK Market PL Lombard 837-3500 UNITED ARTISTS MARLEY STATION Ritchie Hwy.

at Roule 100 760-3300 NO PASSES OR COUPONS ACCEPTED PAMAMUKT COMMUNIUTIONS COMPANY LOEWS COLUMBIA PALACE 9 Rle. 108 opp. Phelps luck Or. 730-4606 LOEWS TIMONIUM CINEMA York Rd. opp.

Fair Grounds 252-2202 UNITEO ARTISTS GOLDEN RING Golden Ring Mall 574-3333 WESTVIEW CINEMA 6026 Baltimore Nai Pike 747-3800 SEEN IN YEARS!" WINNER ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATIONS barrister Jay (Roshan Seth fes ters in bitterness, longing for his home amid the perfumed gar dens and verandas of Uganda. He watches his daughter mature and face an uncertain future. She Is an Indian born Into a comfortable African lifestyle, but now trying to make her way In an American South under less than desirable circumstances. Mina (Sarita Choudhury) is entering voluptuous womanhood at 23 with no true goal in her Lite, unsure which of the many cul rural possibilities she wishes to pursue. If any.

She's working as a motel cleaning lady. (Has any movie In history ever been made about a motel cleaning lady?) None of the Indian boys attract her (though she attracts them). One day. by accident, and the next night, by another accident, she encounters Demetrius. Demetrius (Denzel Washing ton) Is trying oh-so-very hard to make It In a world that probably does not have his Interests at heart.

He's obtained a bank loan, bought a van, and by the dint of hard work has built up a business as a carpet cleaner, catering mostly to the motel trade. It lsn easy. But In some way it's noble In fact, Washington down-home integrity and decency may be the most affecting portrait of a black man in an American film since Larry Fishburne's father In "Boyz the Hood." "Masala," by the way, means the mov ie, therefore, is about the spice of life. This couple wants so much more, and deserve so much more. When they settle on each other, the small, circumscribed societies that spawned them pretty much go bananas.

It's the oldest of stories, the Romeo-Jull-et thing, where competing families are so affronted by the passion of the lovers, and the potential union the lovers represent that they cannot but conspire to destroy them both. Effortlessly brilliant, Mira Nalr's direction carries us Into two distinct and wholly believable groups. But while It makes each group come alive with extraordinary ferocity, It also manages to underscore, always, the human commonality between both and all groups. Nair, an Indian-born, Harvard graduate who won a world-wide reputation with "Salaam, Bombay!" (1988) manages a rather large miracle: a two-hour film with the density and humanity of a Dickens novel, a wide cast of believable and lovable characters, a tone that varies from farce to lust to love to hate, all built from the dreams and memories and aspirations of people a long way from their motherlands. No American film this year can touch it 1 NEW FACES-ALL AMERICAN GIRlS UKItIN IAL JAUt (xxx)L 2 3 USA DE LEEUW UV.

I Ub EKillK (x) 5AMAIHAFOX "TINSELTOWN" ixxxir BEST PICTURE "NO MOVIE AROUND WILL LEAVE YOU WITH A WIDER SMILE! Celebrate the unexpected charm of Hear My -David Ansen, NEWSWEEK BEST DIRECTOR Oliver Stone BEST SCREENPLAY Oliver Stone Zachar) Sklir BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Robert Richardson BEST SOI ND Tod A. Mailland. CA Denzet Washington and Sarita Cboudhary. 'Mississippi Riasaia' Starring Denzd Washington and Sarita Choudhury. Directed by Mra Nalr.

Released by Samuel Goldwyn Rated R. dignity in the margins of a larger society that would prefer that they not make much trouble, noise or money. The Indians live in an almost hermetically sealed unit, clinging to their values and their ways against the predations of mass culture. They are already a victim of one exodus, driven from Africa (where they had been deposited many years earlier by the British by a black despot called Idi Amin. They are, therefore.

BEST SI PPORTING AC TOR Tomim Lee June, BEST FILM EDITING Joe Hutting Pietrn Srahi BEST ORIGINAL SCORE John Williams Michael Minkler Gregjt Undaker UNITED ARTISTS GOLDEN RING 574-3333 In THE BEST MOVIE I'VE -Daphne Davis, AMERICAN WOMAN -i- MtmSA itww. GENERAL CINEMA LOEWS GSa Nw Showing rr'ifrMrg I 1 urn i I LOEWS ROTUNDA CINEMAS 40TH ST. AT KESWICK RD.2351800 starts today exclusively at uaiiy snowomer I LOEWS I TIMONIUM CINEMAS I 252-220 In Stereo LOEWS VALLEY CENTRE 9 363-4194 mt I NO PASSES OR COUPONS ACCEPTED Maryland Uva, The Sun, February 28, 1992.