‘BLINDED BY THE LIGHT’: GOOD TIMES IN ‘BADLANDS’
VIVEIK KALRA IS JAVED, A TEEN CAPTIVATED BY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S MUSIC, IN “BLINDED BY THE LIGHT.”
There’s a scene in “Blinded by the Light,” the film opening Friday based on a true story about a young Pakistani immigrant in ’80s England who becomes obsessed with Bruce Springsteen, in which it lays all of its biases bare.
Javed (Viveik Kaira), a high school student in the small town of Luton turned on to The Boss by a Sikh schoolmate (Aaron Phagura), finds himself at odds with his neighborhood best friend, Matt (Dean-Charles Chapman), an aspiring new-wave star with an A Flock of Seagulls haircut. Javed, who wants to be a writer, has been penning lyrics for him, and the two previously could agree on the brilliance of the Pet Shop Boys.
But then Javed finds the light of salvation through “Dancing in the Dark,” and all bets are off. “Synths are the future,” Matt snorts at Javed, knocking Bruce as his parents’ music.
Though the moment is meant to underscore Matt’s cluelessness, Springsteen-style, guitar-based rock — or rock of any kind — is pretty thin on the ground in the Top 10 these days. Matt may have been more right than he knew.
But the blinkered, pro-Springsteen fandom of “Blinded by the Light” is also its most charming, if at times hokey, asset. Unhooked from the fantasy plot contrivance of “Yesterday,” the other summer film about a guy in love with the music of a rock standard bearer, “Blinded by the Light” can just be a celebration of how music can mean so much, especially when it hits you at a vulnerable time in your life.
Javed, torn between cultures, finds himself increasingly at odds with his old-school Muslim dad (Kulvinder Ghir). Things aren’t any less stormy outside the house, where the British social fabric is starting to fray, thanks to a sputtering economy, high unemployment and a virulent backlash against immigrants that, chillingly, has National Front protesters in the streets shouting, “Send them back.”
He finds release from his troubles in an English girlfriend (Nell Williams) and the music of Springsteen. While Bruce’s Jersey dreams might not seem to have much relevance to a British Pakistani kid — “Are you sure you’re Asian?,” Javed’s sister asks him at one point — the lyrics of freedom and hope speak to him in a way that neither the traditional Pakistani music of his father nor the bhangra (an electro update of Punjabi folk music that exploded in England in the ’80s) of his sister ever could.
Director Gurinder Chada (“Bend It Like Beckham”), a Kenyan-born South Asian who grew up in London and is a Springsteen fan, understands Javed’s divided soul. More than most, she was the right person to bring Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir to life. That comes through in the film, which is as much a toast to youthful idealism and exuberance as it is specifically to Springsteen’s music. (There’s a lot of ’80s pop in “Blinded by the Light,” such as Mental as Anything’s sunny “Live It Up” and a-ha’s soaring “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” that’s not Springsteen-related.)
Chada does make one odd stylistic choice. The movie breaks occasionally for scenes in which Bruce’s lyrics are displayed on the screen, like one of those lyric videos you stumble across on YouTube. Unlike the movie “Rocketman,” these scenes aren’t quite fantastical enough to offer the escape of a traditional musical, yet they take the viewer out of the story.
But this is a minor quirk in what is mostly joyful late-summer escapism. Matt may have been correct about pop music’s future, but Javed is right about its heart.