Film
East is East
- Director
- Damien O’Donnell
- Certificate
- 15
- Running Time
- 96 mins
For proud Pakistani chip shop owner George ‘Ghengis’ Khan (the late, great Om Puri), his seven children are nothing but a disappointment. Actually, as far as George is concerned he only has six offspring. His eldest son Nazir ceased to exist when he ripped off his veil during an arranged marriage and fled to Eccles, where he became a camp milliner. Among the remaining six, who appear to be the only Asians in early ‘70s Salford, Meenah (Archie Panjabi) prefers street football to wearing her sari; hippy Saleem (Chris Bisson) is creating something unsavoury at art school while pretending to study engineering; hunky Tariq (Jimi Mistry) spends his spare time snogging the lovely blonde Stella (Emma Rydal); and surly young Sajid (Jordan Routledge), or “bastard” as he’s universally known, refuses to remove his parka. Trouble is, the war of cultures is actually taking place inside George’s own family as he’s married to long-suffering Ella (Linda Bassett), who’s 100% pure Lancashire. Things come to a head when he resolves to curb the young mosque-dodgers’ Westernised behaviour by parting traumatised Sajid from his foreskin and marrying off the two eldest boys to the ugliest Pakistani girls in Bradford.
Ayub Khan-Din’s wonderful, humane and richly observant script is almost miraculous in its avoidance of that dreadful pall of political correctness that you’d expect to hover ominously over such a drama and suck its humour dry with an eagerness to avoid giving offence. It’s hard, for example, to imagine Hanif Kureishi scripting a scene in which a bunch of teenage Asians watch Enoch Powell ranting on the telly, prompting one to turn to another and remark, “I wish they’d repatriate our dad.” But at the same time, Ayub skilfully engages our sympathy for George, who is at heart a decent and honourable man even as he turns more monstrous. The great Om Puri delivers a towering performance in the role, while Linda Bassett more than holds her own as the loyal Ella, who tries to keep the peace between her rebellious brood and their tyrannical father. It all builds towards a superbly engineered Mike Leigh moment of social embarrassment, ending with a terrific fanny gag that challenges Tinseltown’s current crop of teen comedies on their own territory, and a rousing, gloriously ironic rendition of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Teach Your Children. Marvellous.
East is East makes a welcome return to the big screen in the Watershed’s December Screen Homage Sunday brunch season, honouring the greats who carked it this year.
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