Entire village squares erupt into coordinated dance movements.
There are exuberant sequences in "Blinded by the Light" that are basically from out of a movie musical. Every fan has their deity, whether it's the teenagers in Robert Zemeckis' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" trying to score tickets to the Beatles' appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show," or the Elvis-obsessed Japanese teenagers wandering around Memphis in Jim Jarmusch's " Mystery Train." Javed's discovery of Springsteen's music leads him into all kinds of unexpected terrain, a tentative romance with a classmate ( Nell Williams), conflict with his father, and tension with his best mate Matt. People make fun of teenagers for this kind of thing, but the emotions of fandom are so pure! The root of the word "fanatic" is "fanum" - meaning "temple," a place where zealots come to worship. Javed never knew music could be like this, that music - made by an American guy from some place called New Jersey - could speak so directly to him, the son of immigrants in far-away England. As Javed listens to “The Promised Land,” Springsteen's lyrics float through the air, projected onto the sides of buildings, walls, the music literally actualized in the air, in Javed's world. It's like Springsteen himself created that apocalyptic storm. As Javed listens to "Dancing in the Dark," his entire inner life explodes in a moment of revelation, reflected in the outer world as a gigantic wind storm wreaking havoc in his neighborhood (the Great Storm of 1987). One day, a Sikh classmate named Roops ( Aaron Phagura) hands Javed a couple of Springsteen cassettes, sensing the troubled Javed may need it. (The xenophobes who consider "Born in the U.S.A." their anthem clearly haven't listened to the actual lyrics of the song). The album is a real rager, verbalizing the loss, hardship, and poverty of the American working-class as Springsteen saw it all around him. That is, until the 1984 juggernaut of Born in the U.S.A., filled with catchy tunes, but seething with political and social anger. But Springsteen was from the past, he had nothing to do with "now." "Now" was Madonna and Prince and Pet Shop Boys and Tiffany and Michael Jackson. Maybe your dad had Born to Run, or Nebraska in his collection. (Javed's father says to him at one point, "Pakistanis do not go to parties." Javed replies, "I thought I was British.") His best friend Matt ( Dean-Charles Chapman) is swept up in the New Wave scene, and Javed writes lyrics for Matt's songs, feeling frustrated and trapped.īruce Springsteen isn't a presence at all in these early sequences, an accurate representation of what it was like in the early 1980s teenage music scene. He's not allowed to have a social life, a girlfriend, independence.
Parental expectation weighs heavily on Javed, who hides not just his dream of being a writer from his parents, but almost every other aspect of his personality. Javed's mother ( Meera Ganatra) works out of their home as a seamstress, and his father ( Kulvinder Ghir) works at a nearby factory. Set in the 1980s in the small town of Luton, Javed's family struggles to make ends meet in the crushing recession of the late Thatcher era, battling economic strife, rising nationalism, and racist attacks. "Blinded by the Light," at its very best, captures the experience of being a fan, the pure exhilaration of it, and the sense of your vision opening out to vistas beyond your horizon. Rock'n'Roll is the basis for "Blinded by the Light" (Manzoor co-wrote the script).
That's what Bruce Springsteen did for journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, whose memoir Greetings From Bury Park: Race.
You never see the world in quite the same way again. It's like having a house fall on top of you. There's a surfeit of feeling on Javed's face, so perfectly evocative of what it feels like - particularly as a teenager - to suddenly get really into something - music, a movie, a celebrity - and that something hits you in just exactly the right way at exactly the right time. It's more than excitement what Javed feels hits at a deeper level. Javed is obsessed with Springsteen's music, but the look on his face as he drinks in Springsteen's powerful meat-and-potatoes stage presence is a visual echo of the awestruck look on Courtney Cox's face as Springsteen pulls her out of the audience in the same video (which was directed by Brian de Palma). There's a moment in "Blinded by the Light," a new film from writer/director Gurinder Chadha (" Bend It Like Beckham," "Bride & Prejudice"), when the young protagonist, a kid named Javed ( Viveik Kalra), watches the video for Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark" for the first time.