Blinded by the Light
(Springs) teenage kicks…
Gurinder Chadha’s love letter to the Boss.
out 9 august
Music on the radio is a shared fever dream, a collective hallucination, a secret amongst millions,” Bruce Springsteen writes in his memoir, Born To Run. That understanding of the hotline between popular song and personal feeling powers Gurinder Chadha’s sometimes hokey yet rousingly heartfelt coming-of-ager.
Focused on a British-Pakistani teenager’s Springsteen obsession in 1987 Luton, Blinded engages energetically with music’s transformative punch. Viveik Kalra plays Javed, a poetry-writing 16-year-old whose father (Kulvinder Ghir) wants him to quit dreaming and start earning. Javed has other ideas, but
he lacks either an outlet or a tribe… until schoolmate Roops (Aaron Phagura) lends him two Boss albums. Springsteen’s lyrics of hunger and longing cut deep in Javed, who soon becomes the most voluble Boss-obsessive in town.
While Javed’s earnest embrace of Springsteen can seem painfully gauche, Blinded works because of that honestto-goodness awkwardness rather than despite it. Drawing on journalist/ co-writer Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir Greetings From Bury Park, Chadha
(Bend It Like Beckham) acknowledges how embarrassing teenage musical devotions can seem from the outside yet renders that passion palpable.
Duly, the cast attack it with gusto. Kalra sells Javed’s passions with breakthrough-worthy conviction. Nell Williams deserves more development as Javed’s love interest, but Ghir makes persuasively conflicted work of his dad. And top Springsteen in-joke marks are banked for celebrity fan/near-lookalike Rob Brydon’s larky cameo.
Despite the odd clichéd plot twist and fairytale lapse, Chadha smartly grounds her comic capers and fanfuelled flourishes in recognisable and raw realities. Deliciously fastidious period details mount, from the student DJs forced to play what kids want (“Yes,” one sighs, “that even means Debbie Gibson”) to the movie posters and beyond. She’s also unflinching on the racism and challenges faced by Pakistani families in ’80s Britain, an honesty that lends the film a sharpened Brexit-era sting and leads to Javed’s affecting reconsideration of the ties that bind.
Just as Javed finds his identity in the spaces between cultures, it’s in the spaces between realism and fantasy, between tradition and escapism, that Blinded rings truest. And Springsteen’s songs, with their documents of struggle and dreams of triumph, offer pointed and potent backdrops throughout. As Javed quotes, loudly, “The dogs on Main Street howl, ’cause they understand…” Kevin Harley
THE VERDICT
A sweet, true and stirring portrait of rock ’n’ roll salvation, with Kalra’s guileless charm a major plus.