Blinded by the Light, a comedy drama by director Gurinder Chadha (of Bend It Like Beckham fame), tells the story of a quiet British-Pakistani boy growing up in, Luton and discovering the music of Bruce Springsteen for the first time. The movie is as much a love letter to the Boss as it is a love letter to the experience of discovering new music.
You remember that feeling? When you finally discover other like minded disciples of songs and artists you thought only you knew. What a goddamn revelation it is when you finally find your tribe.
We meet Javed, growing up underneath the shadow of late-80s Thatcherism and the rise of England’s far-right political group the National Front. He is a bit of a dork. Hopelessly sincere and incredibly earnest. His father is a little overbearing. (You know, in that typically Asian way.) His mother is a seamstress. He’s not allowed to have anything resembling a life.
About twenty-five minutes into the movie, Javed and his family learn of their father being let go from the local car factory. The one true breadwinner of the family is now without a job. Javed is heartbroken, when he stumbles upon some cassettes a schoolmate had handed him, and with a storm raging inside him (and one outside as well), Springsteen’s Dancing in the Dark begins to play. The words swirl around him. Words of anger, of desperation, of the futility of life. Words that are nevertheless filled with the power of never letting go. In these words, Javed finds the truth, that everything is worth fighting against.
By finding the music of Springsteen, Javed finds his own voice. He falls in love, he fights for his place in the world, for a chance at creating the life that he wants. Javed becomes a man. And this is where the movie truly kicks off. The music of Springsteen puts a spring (sorry) in Javed’s step.
When a movie is set in 1987, it quite literally is telling the story of a different time. And when that story is so wrapped up in music and the experiencing of it, that story becomes even more removed from the now. Blinded by the Light is the story of one boy’s journey of self-discovery in a small town in troubled England, but even more than that, this is a movie that reminds us of a time that many have forgotten, and even more may not recognise. A time long before we had any and all music at our fingertips. A time before the iPod. A time before we could scour Napster and Limewire for that one track you know is out there.
Blinded by the Light is a movie filled with moments of joy and happiness, of first love and of growing up, of friends, and of music. But Blinded by the Light is also punctuated by the realities of life, of heartbreak, of not belonging, of loneliness, of racism. Gurinder Chadha doesn’t eschew one for the other. She doesn’t give you life’s wondrous moments, without reminding you of its pain.
Blinded by the Light reminds us of the romance of music, of trading 60 minute cassettes like gold, of having a Sony Walkman perpetually taped to your belt. Blinded by the Light reminds us of the power that music has to change your life. If you don’t believe me, just ask journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, the real life Javed.
Blinded by the Light premieres on HBO Go on September 12th.
Blinded by the Light
117 minutes
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Writers: Paul Mayeda Berges, Gurinder Chadha, and Sarfraz Manzoor
Cast: Viveik Kalra, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Ganatra, Nell Williams, Aaron Phagura, Dean-Charles Chapman, Rob Brydon, and Hayley Atwell
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