The third of this summer’s British, classic rock-based
quasi-musicals (after Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday” and the Elton John biopic “Rocketman”), Gurinder Chadha’s
“Blinded by the Light” uses the songs of Bruce Springsteen as a springboard for
a crowd-pleasing jukebox rock drama that’s charming and joyful, with just
enough real world insight to give it some weight.
The film is
set in the small English town of Luton in 1987, a
volatile time when Margaret Thatcher’s policies created waves of unemployment
and discontentment in working class Brits across the country. The immensely
likeable Viveik Kalra plays
16-year-old Javed, a young aspiring writer who yearns
to escape his depressed hometown and the stifling rules of his traditional
Pakistani household.
He’s been
keeping a diary and writing poems since he was a young boy, even acting as
lyricist for his best friend Matt’s (Dean-Charles Chapman) new wave band. But
he keeps his aspirations a secret from his domineering, tradition-minded
father, Malik (Kulvinder Ghir),
who’s distrustful of Western culture and tells him that writing is just for
British people with rich parents.
At school
he’s struggling to find his place amidst Wham! boys
and Bananarama girls, and the pressures from his
father only get worse after he’s laid off from his factory job. Javed’s mother Noor (Meera Ganatra, in a lovely supporting turn) is forced to make up
the missing income, taking on an unbearable amount of work with her at-home seamstressing business. It seems that something’s got to
give.
Particularly
in its early going, the plot is not without its formulaic pieces. There’s the
teen rebelling against the restrictive traditions of his parents, falling for a
seemingly out of his league classmate, Eliza (Nell Williams), and finding
encouragement in a teacher (Hayley Atwell) who pushes him to reach his full
potential.
Then a
friend introduces Javed to the music of Bruce Spingsteen, whose lyrics offer a “direct line to all that’s
true in this shitty world.” Coming at a particularly desperate moment,
Springsteen’s songs about being stuck in a small town rut and yearning for more
strike a chord with the Pakistani teen and his dreams of escape.
Javed’s initial discovery hits him like a bolt of lightning
in a thrilling sequence that conveys the intensity with which Javed is connecting to what he’s hearing. We see the lyrics
appear in text on screen, swirling around his head, or projected on brick walls
throughout the town.
Even coming
from The Boss’ New Jersey working-class background, the songs express feelings Javed has been struggling to put into words. He’s obsessed,
even as his peers don’t hesitate in telling him that no one listens to
Springsteen anymore, except maybe their dads.
Other songs
turn into full-out production numbers, as when Javed
and his friends break into the campus radio station to blast “Born to Run” over
the loudspeakers or the smitten teen decides to woo Eliza with the words to “Thunder
Road.”
As Javed is inspired to figure out what exactly he wants out
of life, comes to understand his family, and find his own voice through the
music of Bruce Springsteen, the film recognizes that the deeply personal
connection to art and music comes in many forms.
There are
some lovely sequences, like the one in which Javed
accompanies his sister to a daytime dance club for Pakistani pop music and he
gets a chance to clearly see his sister for the first time: observing the way
she uses dance as the sort of escape he finds in Springsteen.
As joyous
and funny as the film can be, it isn’t afraid to dip its toes into the
political, and British Indian filmmaker Gurinder
Chadha (“Bend It Like Beckham,” “Bride &
Prejudice”) uses the story to say something about the intergenerational strain
of the immigrant experience. The conflict at its heart revolves around Javed’s split identity, feeling caught between being
Pakistani and British, and the expectations that come with each.
It’s also
an unmistakable, enthusiastic middle finger to Brexit and the xenophobia that
incited it. Javed and his family face racism, and
even the threat of violence in his neighborhood, from members of the
anti-immigrant National Front. Chadha effectively connects the film’s 1980s
setting to contemporary white nationalist movements gaining platforms around
the world.
Inspired by
journalist Sarfraz Manzoor’s
memoir about his childhood (Manzoor wrote the
screenplay with Chadha and her husband, Paul Mayeda Berges), it’s ultimately a feel-good movie about the
transformative power of great art; the story of a writer driven to write by the
words of another.
Even when
you can clearly see the mechanics working, there’s an infectious joy in its
story about following your heart, and not wasting your chance or letting
opportunity slip away. It’s earnest and proudly, enthusiastically corny. If
you’re able to give yourself over to its pleasures, you might find yourself
singing right along.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2019.
