Also Widely Read By Men
Page 34 WEST IS WEST (15)
When we last left them, in East Is East, the Khan family were tormenting each other in that Manchester flat and rollicking on in all their dysfunctional glory – the Pakistani father, the English mother, and the mixed-up brood of mixed-race kids.
Anyone who saw them then will remember the raw, autobiographical energy of Ayub Khan Din’s script,
and his brazen way of leaping from broad farce to teary melodrama and back again.
The opening takes us back to Manchester, 1976, where Sajid (Aqib Khan) has the misfortune of being the last sibling still living at home. A teenager now, no longer hiding under that perpetual hoodie, he’s a target on all fronts, attacked by racist bullies at school for being a Pakistani and abused by his Dad in the house for not being Pakistani enough. Understandably, his default setting is anger, lately supplemented by intermittent doses of petty theft. A decision is made: Pack off the misfit to a homeland he’s never seen, for a crash course in how to fit in.
The action shifts to the ancestral farm in the Punjab, where Sajid arrives accompanied by his ever-glowering father, the man known, depending on who’s addressing him, as Jahingar or George or just plain Genghis Khan. What follows is the expected coming-of-age tale but with this unexpected twist. Both the boy and the man have some serious growing up to do – the younger, stifling in his British clothes, faces megawatts of culture shock, while the elder, clinging to his patriarchal status, must confront the ex-wife and grown daughters he abandoned 30 years ago.
You don’t need to have seen the earlier film to appreciate this one. They don’t call it a crowd-pleaser for nothing.
Cast: Aqib Khan, Om Puri, Linda Bassett Director: Andy DeEmmony Genre: Comedy, Drama Rating: 3/5 Running Time: 103 min.
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