"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Friday, September 13, 2019

Blinded by the Light (2019, PG-13)


I really enjoyed the trailer for this film and was pleasantly surprised when it came to my area. Inspired by a true story, I wouldn’t say this coming-of-age tale sticks the landing at every turn, but when it’s on, it’s really on. I’m glad to have seen it.

16-year-old Javed has spent his whole life languishing in his English town of Luton. As one of the conspicuous Pakistani families in town, Javed deals with classmates at college who make assumptions about him, skinheads in street who spray epithets on the walls and spit on him, and his demanding immigrant father who can’t understand Javed’s dream of becoming a writer. He feels trapped, and he doesn’t have anywhere to put his sense of frustration and continually-dashed dreams… until a friend introduces him to the music of Bruce Springsteen. Javed finds his own working-class despair echoed in the lyrics of the white American rock musician, and he uses his new Bruce philosophy to try and reshape his life into the one he wants.

I’ll start with the grumbles, chief of which is that the movie feels overwritten at times. In some ways, I suppose it’s leaning into Javed’s own teen angst, making every disappointment feel like the end of the world, but it gets to be too much in some scenes, with one too many defiant shouting matches for a well-structured narrative flow. The story can get meandering in points, although that might speak to its being based on a true story (and I’ve been known to gripe when a biopic takes too many liberties for the sake of pat story beats, so it’s admittedly a balancing act.)

These are some overarching issues, but when it comes to the smaller moments, the film more often than not gets it tremendously right. The movie says so much in instants, like Javed’s face as some Pakistani family friends explain to his father that they’ve put down plastic in their front hallway because little white boys keep peeing on their floor through their mail slot. Moments that feel specific and honest and intimate, some joyous, some heartbreaking, each one real.

When it comes to the music, which is obviously essential here, the film really succeeds. Just overall, it beautifully captures that sense of being a young person having their mind blown by a band or an artist they’ve just discovered: constantly listening, always in an at-minimum mild state of obsession, and finding lyrics that are applicable to every major life situation. Javed using Springsteen songs to express his feelings for a girl or stand up to bigots can be cringey, but in a painfully-relatable teenage way, bringing back memories of the lyrics I used to doodle across the back of every test I took in high school. The absolute thrill he feels at giving himself over to his favorite songs with abandon is so infectious.

Nowhere does this marriage of song and story come together more wonderfully than in the scene of Javed hearing Springsteen’s music for the first time. It’s just excellently done – I love the way snatches of the words swirl around his head and across the screen as, for the first time in his young life, he discovers someone singing the anthem of his own pain and discontentment. I know exactly how it feels to be that kid, and the way the scene comes together captures it so evocatively.

I’m not familiar with most of the cast, save minor roles for Hayley Atwell (Peggy Carter herself!) and Dean-Charles Chapman, who played Tommen on Game of Thrones and more recently appeared on Into the Badlands. Viveik Kalra has an engaging, earnest presence as Javed; while there are moments where he gets to be too much, that’s because Javed can be an aggressively-angsty teen and Kalra is doing his job well. Other standouts include Kulvinder Ghir as Javed’s friend, Meera Ganatra as Javed’s mother, and Nikita Mehta as Javed’s sister.

Warnings

Language (including racial slurs) and strong thematic elements.

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