blinded by the light…

I went along to the Watershed this afternoon to see Gurinder Chadha’s film “Blinded by the Light”. Adapted from Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir “Greetings from Bury Park”, it‘s a poignant comedy about Sarfraz’s youthful obsession with US rock legend Bruce Springsteen and how the power of music and words changed his life.
The background is Luton, in 1987, and schoolboy Javed (played by Viveik Kalra) simply wants to escape the dreary town – awash with its racism, the economic turmoil of the time and its lack of opportunity. Javed wants to become a writer, but sees little hope of being able to achieve his goal – his domineering father expects him to pursue a ‘sensible’ career to bring money into the struggling family. That’s when a classmate introduces him to the music of “The Boss” (Springsteen) and Javed – despite being accused by some of his colleagues as now being a lover of “Dad-Rock”(!) - immediately sees parallels to his own working class life. Springsteen’s music and powerful lyrics become the outlet for his own pent-up ambitions.

There’s huge irony (in my view at least) that Javed, inspired by Springsteen’s songs, sees America as the nation to which we should all aspire – and certainly in both music and opportunity. Thirty years later, in these depressing ‘Trump times’, Springsteen made these comments last November: “These are times when we’ve also seen folks marching, and in the highest offices of our land, who want to speak to our darkest angels, who want to call up the ugliest and most divisive ghosts of America’s past… And they want to destroy the idea of an America for all. That’s their intention... Trump has no interest in uniting the country, really, and actually has an interest in doing the opposite and dividing us, which he does on an almost daily basis. So that’s simply a crime against humanity, as far as I’m concerned. It’s an awful, awful message to send out into the world if you’re in that job and in that position. It’s just an ugly, awful message… It’s a scary moment for any conscientious American, I think.”

Anyway, I digress… It’s certainly not a brilliant film, but it is evocative, charming, hopeful and even inspiring in its way. Very definitely a ‘feel-good’ film (although rather over-doing the sentimental ‘pulling at the heartstrings’ in my view). Obviously, Springsteen’s brilliant music provides most of the film’s soundtrack (and pretty successfully at that) and the lyrics frequently appear on the screen to reinforce the message.

It wasn’t a film I expected to enjoy (especially having read a 2-star review in The Guardian beforehand) but, actually, I rather enjoyed it.