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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