Ah, those were the days. The '80s. A time when Margaret Thatcher towered bestride the country, a political colossus in a parliament of dwarfs. For those on the upswing these were years of infinite opportunity, a boundless feast of finance. Unfortunately such largesse commanded a desperate price, in this case the crushing of those without the means or desire to align themselves with Mrs. T's culture of greed. My Beautiful Laundrette, a fair and true product of the decade, crosses between these (and many other) camps in distilling the era. It captures the scents and sounds, the thoughts and actions; in every fibre Stephen Frears' film speaks of a past so removed it hardly seems to have existed.
The film highlights a dilemma at the heart of the immigrant experience - the desire to belong to Western society while maintaining a clear sense of Pakistani identity. The two brothers, Nasser and Papa, demonstrate this cultural conflict. An ardent intellectual socialist, Papa belongs to old school Pakistan because, like most first generation immigrants, he believes fervently in education combating racism and is vehemently against the greed and conservative economics of Thatcherism.
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