East is East: comedy drama.  Starring Om Puri, Linda Bassett, Jimi Mistry, Chris Brisson, Jordan Routledge, Emil Marwa and Radji James. Directed by Damien O’Donell.  [. . . .] Now Playing at Bay Area Theaters.

          “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet”—Rudyard Kipling

One way to tell we’re becoming a global society is by going to the movies. There are more films not only about the clash of cultures, but also how they intermingle, mirror and tug and bump each other.  In previous decades, cultures, in the movies at least, were seen as distinct and separate. As generally alien and hostile strangers, reflecting the Kipling line quoted above; at best they were boosterism for foreign assimilation of the White Man’s ways; at worst, exercises in racist jingoism.

East is East the latest film to deal specifically with the plight of Pakistani immigrants in England, is a flip on last year’s high culture clash comedy My Son the Fanatic. Both deal with the ambiguities, paradoxes and dilemmas of assimilation, and how the children of immigrants rebel against their elders while the elders wake up to the price they’ve paid for leaving the old world behind.

But in East is East, Om Puri, who played beautifully played the serene cab driver in My Son who struggles with a fundamentalist Moslem offspring, does a near one-eighty to play George Khan, a long-time immigrant and fundamentalist Moslem himself who proudly adheres to the faith of his native land. This even though he’s been married 25 years to an Englishwoman and raised a brood of seven children under the roof of Western culture.

The film is set in Manchester England in 1971, when right wing British Parliament member Enoch Powell’s campaign of foreign repatriation was at its height.   Since 1937 George has lived here and achieved a modicum of success with a fish and chips shop he and wife Ella (Linda Bassett) run. Tidal waves of change are on the way and there’s little he can do stop it.  His first attempt to marry his oldest son Saleem (Chris Bisson) off to a good Moslem girl ends in disaster, when Saleem dumps them all at the altar.  His other sons Talik (Jimi Mistry) and Abdul (Raji James) are free-spirited lusty rebels frolicking towards a secular future.   The devout Maneer (Emil Marwa) oddly enough, is the one George seems to have the least respect for.  He forces the youngest, Sajid (Jordan Routledge, through whose eyes much of the story unfolds) to undergo circumcision even though he’s already seven.  Sajid has assimilation problems of his own: he see the world through a hooded parka throughout the film.  It’s a nice metaphor that parallels both his own insecurities and his father’s.  They may be protected, but suffer from a bad case of tunnel vision. Like it or not, they’re going to have to open up.

Like many traditionalists, George has his nasty reactionary streak. The increasing disorder in his life drives him to authoritarian acts of petty cruelty and violence to restore order. The harder he tries the more chaos he creates. Like his enemy Powell, he’s dealing with forces that are too big to stop.

This is a story of a longtime stranger in a strange land, but also, like My Son, a story of absolutism, idealism and intolerance crumbling in the face of relativism and inclusion.  But while George commits occasionally monstrous acts, he’s clearly not a monster, but a likable and confused man trying too hard to cling to a world he left decades ago, while the one he lives in now barely tolerates him.  His willfulness alienates him, demeans himself and his family and does nothing to protect the values that only he can hope to live by (of course, he falls short there, too. While strictly forbidding his family alcohol and pork, he smokes like a chimney.). 

East is East  is extremely well-made and very affectionate and rich with gritty detail and pungent dialogue.  Director Damien O’Donnel has the sharp dancing eye for comic rhythm, composition and movement. He gets both his actors and camera working well together. Though the somewhat episodic narrative occasionally loses its way, there’s plenty of warmth, humor and insight. Among the funny bits is a running joke concerning an aggressive Great Dane.  More hilarious is an embarrassing scene between the Khan family and another family of Pakistani immigrants with whom George wants to unite in wholly unsuitable matrimony.

Om Puri once again proves himself one of the great actors in the world, imbuing the stiff-necked George with facets of dignity, charm, grace, violent stubbornness and love for his tempestuous brood. Linda Bassett as Ella stays with him every step of the way.  Her scenes with Puri always ring true. They’re still hot for one another after twenty-five years and a scene where he buys her a barber chair for a present is the height of daffy domestic charm.   They dance together like a couple of old perfectly matched shoes.  When he violently turns on her, the effect is shocking and disturbing, yet is well-rooted in the preceding episodes.

While Hollywood films still cling to their contrived bubble-gum endings, independent and international films like East is East still do their best to accommodate some sense of real life in their worlds.  The film doesn’t cop out like The Next Best Thing, but closes on a note of messy hope.  Instead of swinging between the two poles of East and West, of dire cynicism or preposterous optimism, it finds its own wistful, funny center. The twain do, finally, seem to be meeting.