Initially, Ayub Khan Din was hesitant to write a sequel to East is East (1999): the film was among the most successful independent British films ever made, and he knew that sequels rarely live up to the original. Finally, though, he realised that East is East left audiences with several questions that they wanted answers to. So, a full ten years after the original, Ayub Khan Din dug back into his childhood memories to create West is West.
East is East introduced audiences to the Khans, a mixed-race family who run a fish and chip shop in 1970s Salford. Om Puri played the controlling Pakistani father, George, and Linda Bassett his English wife Ella. Their British-born children rebel against George’s attempts to force them to conform to a traditional Muslim lifestyle. Although these confrontations are often comic, the film also treats serious themes, as the culture clash threatens to break up the family. Although made a decade after the original film, West is West takes up the Khan family’s story five years later: it is still the 1970s, and George and Ella’s youngest son Sajid is the only one still living at home. A victim of racist bullying, Sajid starts getting into trouble at school and with the police. As a last resort, George takes Sajid on his first trip to Pakistan, hoping to instil some traditional values in him. Ultimately, George realises that his own behaviour is the main problem. East is East alluded to George’s first wife and family in Pakistan: West is West satisfies viewers’ curiosity about his mysterious past. It introduces a Pakistani wife and grown-up children who are hurt and angry that George abandoned them thirty years previously.
The sequel treats as many serious issues as the first film, but is more emotionally satisfying as George makes important realisations, and comes to a better understanding with his family. Like East is East, even when it is trying to be funny, West is West isn’t the funniest film you’ll ever see. There are many entertaining one-liners, though. One of the biggest sources of humour is Aqib Khan’s wonderful performance as Sajid: though Yorkshire-born, he did an excellent job learning the verbal idiosyncracies of his Mancunian character, and delivers the lines with panache. During the press conference, Khan said that his friends always used to compare him to Sajid in East is East: although this was his first time acting on film, he gives a very natural performance, perhaps in part because he felt an affinity with the character, whose personality, he says, matches his own. Om Puri is, as usual, a delight to watch, although his character’s broken English seemed a little caricatured. The sequel offered Puri greater scope than East is East in terms of the emotions portrayed: in addition to George’s characteristic anger, the sequel demanded displays of guilt, pain, hurt and regret. Puri must have enjoyed the challenge, as he says that his favourite scene was his emotional breakdown in front of his wife Ella.
West is West is more visually pleasing than East is East, as the grubby terraces of Salford are replaced by the vast sun-drenched landscapes of India. The difference is not stereotyped, however: George’s first family live in a dilapidated old house without plumbing, and their lifestyle makes Salford’s seem luxurious. I would have enjoyed a little more variety in the locations and situations that arise on the visit to Pakistan, however. I like what this film sets out to do, but felt that the script and situations could have been pushed further. It seems as though the writer’s focus on the central storyline (George’s emotional epiphany) resulted in a neglect of details which bring a film to life and make it stand out in viewers’ minds. In East is East, the most memorable comic detail was the dish of bacon and sausages which George’s children make while he is out, and their frantic efforts to cover up the smell when he comes home. Such details were few and far between in West is West: there was the mildly entertaining, if implausible, character of the white teacher at Sajid’s school who is obsessed with Pakistan: he gives Sajid a copy of Kipling’s Kim, which becomes a fond reference for Sajid and his new friend in Pakistan, in spite of its blatant and outdated colonialism. A more amusing (if contrived) detail was Sajid’s brother’s love of Nana Mouskouri: Sajid knows that he has located his brother’s ideal match when he sees a girl in the village who wears glasses with heavy black frames. Another pleasing detail was in the film’s conclusion, where Ella asks George if he would like a cup of tea: he says he’ll have ‘half a cup’, an amusing reference to his half-British identity. It also harks back to the conclusion of East is East, where George accepts half a cup of tea from his wife as a symbol of their reconciliation. Of course, many viewers may not have seen the original film since it first came out, and ten years is a long time to remember such a line. Happily, there is a third instalment scheduled to come out in just a couple of years: if George asks for half a cup of tea then (or, who knows, perhaps a full cup by that time), we’ll be more prepared to laugh knowingly. But let’s hope that the next time around, Ayub Khan Din will include far more of these kinds of details, giving the third film a more individual character.
