Indian actor Om PuriReuters
When East Is East was released in Britain in 1999, it clearly struck a chord. The dramatic comedy about a Pakistani-English family and its irascible patriarch George Khan (Om Puri), who runs a fish-and-chip shop in the white, working-class Manchester suburb of Salford in 1971, is a sunny look at the growing pains of a newly multicultural society. It earned a best British film prize at that year's BAFTAs and took in more than $30-million worldwide - more than 10 times the film's budget.
West Is West, set five years later, focuses on Sajid (Aqib Khan, in his first role), the youngest son in the family, who starts skipping school to avoid racist bullies. Because of the bullying, he begins to hate his identity and his father. In an attempt to teach him discipline and to learn about his roots, George takes him back to rural Pakistan, the homeland the family had abandoned 30 years before. Along the way, George learns some lessons about roots and humility of his own.
Some people might have seen East Is East as a one-off venture, a charming film of its time. The exception was Leslee Udwin, a producer on the original film who was the driving force behind the sequel. And talking about the film at the Toronto International Film Festival last year with director Andy DeEmmony and star Om Puri, there was no doubt who was boss on the project.
Born in Israel and raised in South Africa, Udwin has the sort of theatrical presence that allows her to say things like: "From the very first time I read the script I knew that George Khan was 100-per-cent my father, except for my father being Jewish and having no real connection to Pakistan or England."
Udwin's introduction to producing came via an unusual route. In 1985, as the head of a tenants' group, she became engaged in a prolonged court battle with an unscrupulous landlord. She won the case and later collaborated on a television docudrama, Sitting Targets, about the experience. That led her into television producing, and eventually to East Is East, her first feature film.
And from the beginning, she knew there was more than one story to be told from the material in East Is East, written by Ayub Khan-Din.
"I knew that Ayub was writing from his own life experience. It became very obvious to me in discussing the anecdotes and stories that Ayub told me that there was more than one film here. I knew that he was taken as a young boy to Pakistan, to meet his 'other mummy' and 'other family' and that was the next stage in the story. For the next five years, I kept pestering him and eventually he sat down and wrote it."
Along the way, there were more hitches than the long gestation period of the script. Tax breaks in England were cut back severely, and the economic downturn of 2008 scared investors away. Udwin spent years cobbling together the financing. She and original director Damien O'Donnell ( Rory O'Shea) also disagreed about how the story should develop. She found a new director, Andy DeEmmony, who had worked mostly in commercials and television, "but had a flair for comedy and performances, which were the essential things here."
The quiet-spoken DeEmmony was happy to help: "I loved the original. I thought it was quite ground-breaking but I could see a second leg to the journey, you know? A chance to go a bit deeper with the strong father-and-son dynamic drew me in. I'm always interested in that kind of comedy that's right between tears and laughter."
Although the cast isn't entirely the same, the film managed to bring back Jimi Mistry, star of the first film, as well as Linda Bassett as George's wife Ella. The essential ingredient, though, was re-casting Indian actor Om Puri. A veteran of more than 200 films in India, he is generally regarded as one of the great Indian actors of the postwar period (he has been named to the Order of the British Empire for his contribution to English cinema). Along with Gandhi (1982) , he views East Is East as one of the key films launching him in the West.
Puri recalls that when he first asked about what accent he should use for the part, to he was told to speak English with a "general South Asian" accent. He found the description too imprecise. He eventually decided that George's English accent would be specific to him, and doubtless influenced by his wife Ella. So George's accent is a "coinage," or invention, a salty mixture of Pakistani and working-class English cursing. And he curses a lot. George is an angry man, although he mellows over the course of West Is West.
"I thought he was a bit one-dimensional in the first film" Puri says. " I think there's more to him this time. He is embarrassed and feels guilty and he lashes out, but he's not a villain or a buffoon. I asked myself, 'Who is this man who Ella, an educated and kind woman, can love? There must be something good in him.' "
As for the future for George and the Khan family? Udwin has already announced plans to make a third film, set once again in England. Tentative titles are either East Meets West or East Is West. Khan-Din will begin writing it this year.
"Without the success of East Is East, there wouldn't have been mainstream British Asian movies like Bend It Like Beckham," Udwin says. "I think the timing is more right than ever. We're living in a period when minorities are so often demonized, and I think it's important to show people like the Khans, who are no doubt flawed, but are going through the same problems every family can recognize."