LONDON – The film version of Ayub Khan Din’s semi-autobiographical stage play ‘East is East’ came out in 1999. It was a time when young British Asians were starting to penetrate pop culture as never before. Bands such as Cornershop and Babylon Zoo were reaching the top of the charts, comedies such as Goodness Gracious Me were appearing on the BBC, hipsters were heading to Hoxton to check out the “sounds of the Asian underground”.
Suddenly, for a brief and only partially-hyped-up moment, Asians were “in”. ‘East is East’ wasn’t especially hip, or even aimed at fashionistas, but its tale of a Pakistani patriarch trying to control his unruly family in early-Seventies Salford had vivid characters, a strong screenplay, and wit and compassion in equal measure. As an exercise in dramatising working-class Northern history, its cheery, redemptive storyline mirrored those of The Full Monty and the later Billy Elliot. Its treatment of Asian immigration owed less to social realism than to the bawdy, knockabout humour of a Donald McGill seaside postcard or Coronation Street’s Stan and Hilda Ogden going at each other.
Times have changed. The category “Asian” no longer seems very relevant; religious identity – especially as it pertains to Islamic youths – is what excites commissioning editors. Have filmgoers, even those who loved ‘East is East,’ really been pining for a sequel? ‘West is West’ starts as it doesn’t mean to go on. The setting is still Salford, but five years on, in 1976.
Teenager Sajid (Aqib Khan), who used to go around engulfed by his giant Parka coat, is having a terrible time. At school, he’s patronised by teachers and gets his head flushed in a toilet by bullies; at home, his chip-shop-proprietor dad George (Om Puri) never lets up shouting. What’s a kid like him to do? He swears, he steals, he becomes a tearaway. The only solution, according to his dad, a disrespectful chap who’s always yammering on about how he doesn’t get any “bloody respect”, is to send him home to Pakistan for a dose of decent values.
At this point, the filmmakers, director Andy De Emmony and writer Khan Din, move out of their comfort zone, relocating the action from grey, greasy-terraced Lancashire to the sunny expanses of the sub-continent. Sajid, now sporting an undersized suit, wanders around the dusty track roads of his ancestral village. He’s still truculent. When he arrives, he looks out at all the beggars and street people gathered in front of the airport: “Are they all related to us?” ‘West is West’ has two other storylines.
The first involves George’s older son Maneer (Emil Marwa), an earnest Nana Mouskouri-obsessive, who’s been living in the village in the hope of finding a bride. The second, more substantial, features George being forced to confront the wife Basheera (Ila Arun) and children he left behind 30 years earlier when he decamped to England and married a white woman Ella (Linda Bassett).
Where is home? George dithers and dallies. He wants to atone for his cruelties, but is it possible to make amends after so much time has elapsed? What about his duties to Ella? Tired of waiting for him to return, and aghast that he’s plundering their bank account to pay for a new village home, she finally shows up with her best friend (Lesley Nicol).
It’s in the ensuing scenes between Ella and Basheera that the film feels most alive. Tired culture-clash gags are put aside in favour of delicately handled and often very moving exchanges between the two wronged women. They don’t speak a word of each other’s language, but they’re united both by a capacity for suffering and an unquenchable pride.
This – not Maneer’s arranged marriage, not Sajid’s road to enlightenment – is the real heart of the story. To watch Arun and Bassett, sometimes Puri, too, is to be reminded of how rarely cinema portrays grown-up love, love weighed down but also elevated by contradictions, regrets, sacrifices, patience. ‘West is West’ is full of delights: Peter Robertson’s airy cinematography is casually gorgeous, the songs on the soundtrack are delightful, and the acting consistently top-notch.
