Heartwarming, life-affirming cinema always has the perilous potential for turning mawkish. But uplifting music, free of the sometimes overwrought dimensions of moviemaking, is usually free of such burdens. Zeroing in on the advantages of the latter and mostly avoiding the pitfalls of the former, filmmaker Gurinder Chadha succeeds in achieving that exuberant, ineffable feeling when music can change your life. In her inspiring new drama “Blinded by the Light,” Chadha (“Bend it Like Beckham“) taps into the anthemic spirit of the always-stirring songs of Bruce Springsteen.
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An unabashed tribute to The Boss and his music, “Blinded By The Light” not only reinforces the transformative power that rock and roll can have on an individual’s life, but reaffirms the notion that great mainstream storytelling is still possible in familiar crowd-pleasers like this.
Set in Margaret Thatcher’s stifling late ’80s, Javed (Viveik Kalra) is a Pakistani British teenager who seems to lack purpose and a sense of direction. His factory working father encourages him to do well in school so that he can hopefully avoid the mistakes he made and have a better life, but doesn’t leave him a lot of room to pursue dreams. Javed doesn’t want to be a doctor or a lawyer, he wants to write, and so through his poetry, he tries to find himself and gear up to leave his town for better things. Javed wants to share his political and working-class ideas on paper, but he’s too ashamed to show his work to anybody; that is, until he discovers the music of Springsteen, which jolts him like electricity.
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This moment of epiphany is triggered by his fellow Pakistani friend at school who gives him two Springsteen albums: Born in the U.S.A and Darkness on the Edge of Town. From the moment Javed straps on his Walkman headphones and “Dancing in the Dark” blasts off, he is hooked by the lyrics (“I check my look in the mirror, I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face”). He buys anything and everything Boss-related, his room filled with posters, learning the discography front to back, even starting to dress up like Springsteen’s iconic checkered shirt, working-class man look from the Born in the USA era. Suffice to say, Javed is inspired, and the film uses over two dozen Springsteen songs to carry the narrative forward. If anything, this is the closest to a Springsteen movie musical we’re ever going to get and frankly, no one should bother after this.
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Each song is used to vigorously depict Javed’s struggles and courageousness, and Chadha wisely has the lyrics popping off the screen to show the connection Javed has with Bruce’s own dilemmas in each song. “Independence Day” shows Javed’s problematic relationship with his dad, while “Jungleland” is played as the London far-right riots break out in 1987. “Thunder Road” and “Prove It All Night” (with the lyrics “If dreams came true well wouldn’t that be nice but this ain’t no dream we’re living for tonight”) empower Javed, as he sings them in a public market to his crush and classmate Eliza (Nell William). The highlight, however, is “Born to Run,” where Javed, Eliza, and his best friend are running through the streets of London singing the song, which includes the lyrics, “Baby this town rips the bones from your back, It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap.”
But it’s not just a montage of songs to Springsteen music and it’s to Chadha’s credit, the film isn’t overcooked. With a clear cut knowledge of Springsteen’s music in hand, she manages to parallel the songs to Javed’s story without creating cloying sentiment (mostly anyhow). This is one of the most joyous and exhilarating movies you will see this year and because there is so much passion flowing out from the music, screenplay, and acting, you totally forgive the film when it strays into the predictable and even a little bit of corniness. ‘Light’ is a movie where you see story beats coming a mile ahead and it’s still it’s hard not to be smiling ear to ear throughout.
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Inspired by the life of British journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, who wrote a book about how Springsteen’s music saved his life as a teenager in the late ‘80s, he also co-wrote the script with Chadha and Paul Mayeda Berges, and so the magical zeal of the source material remains intact.
This is easily Chadha’s best movie since “Bend it Like Beckham,” taps into a similar rousing spirit and is destined to become a huge hit that crosses generational and cultural lines—not unlike the way Springsteen’s music lifted up a Pakistani teenager in the 1980s thousands of miles away in Great Britain. This is perhaps the true heartrending power of Chadha’s film, one that need not dwell too much about race and culture, because the uniting love of a soulful rock spiritually is universally uniting. The Boss would be proud. [A-]
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