Film Analysis: East Is East

East is East is a film about a Half-Pakistani family lives in England. The father, George/Jahangir Khan is from Pakistan and wants his children to feel connected to his home country. Ella Khan however is the mother of the family and is from England. Because of this there is a struggle for the seven children to find their identity. Mr. Khan expects his children to follow his strict Pakistani Muslim ways, but the children does not really feel like they belong to Pakistan. After having lived their whole lives in Salford, England, they feel like Englishmen and think of themselves as Englishmen. There is only one of the children that follows his father’s religion, Maneer Khan, whom we later see in the sequel, West is West. The two films has several
He wants them to be as religious as him, but they want to rather find their own identity and live their lives as they want. The eldest son is Nazir. He is disowned by his father George, after he runs away from the arranged wedding and starts a homosexual relationship. This is the start of the family breaking apart. George is afraid not to be respected in his Pakistani society and because of that shout at his children not to be a disgrace and a shame to him. He even goes as far as hitting both his wife, Ella, and his most religious son, Maneer. This event makes his family kind of scared of him, and everyone who has seen the film were probably somewhat moved by those scenes. In the sequel, George starts of very similar to the person he was in the first one. However, throughout the film he develops to become more of an understandable character. Both in the first film and in the start of the second he is quite the horrid character, who uses force on everyone who stands in his way. By the end of the second film, George has really become a new person, and when the credits comes, you know that George is a nice
I think that the main themes in both of the films is “finding your identity” and “unity of the family”. In the first film, I think that the absolute main theme was “unity”, because there was several problems inside the family. Some of it has already been written, but the main problem is that George really wants his children to be like him, a Pakistani Muslim. The children look at themselves, as more English than Pakistani, but this is where the conflict with “identity” comes in. They have to try to find out what they are by themselves led by their parents who come from different backgrounds, both different religion and nationality. Nazir found his identity but had to escape the family because of it. It is however in the sequel were the theme, “identity” really traps up, especially for Sajid. At first Sajid is reluctant to go to Pakistan, and seems quite bored when he gets there. Despite that, he really enjoys his stay after a while. He gets some friends, and at one point, he would rather stay there than go back to England. The trip made him connect to his roots as Pakistani and, who knows? Maybe he will grow up to be a good Muslim? The trip also had quite the impact on George, but instead of finding a new identity, he gets a taste of what he left behind when he went to England in