Blinded by the Light: The Movie

Lori and I went to see "Blinded by the Light" this evening, in a "Springsteen Fan Event" at a local theater. There were maybe 40 people there, but that was hardly the point of it all: It was validation night! A motion picture, distributed by Warner Brothers, that gets it.

The fist and most obvious question to ask is, "if I'm not a big Springsteen fan, will I like this movie?"

To which the only answer I can give is, "how the hell would I know?"

With that out of the way, I'll add, "go see it."

This coming-of-age movie through the words and music of Bruce Springsteen is overstuffed with set pieces, is unabashed in its hero worship, and yet it still mostly works. It's based on Sarfraz Manzoor's book Greetings from Bury Park: A Memoir and directed by Gurinder Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham), and we can sum it up as: boy lives a miserable lonely life (read: no girlfriend) with an overbearing father, has little money, is discriminated against for his ethnicity and national heritage, hears Bruce, and... hears Bruce, and... hears Bruce some more, and... is transformed! He turns his bedroom in to a shrine, he starts wearing denim and plaid, he wins the writing prize, he gets the girl, he gets to go to New Jersey, and he even gets a hug from his dad.

The fun part of it is, despite all of the completely predictable clichés, it's a delightful movie. Kudos to all the synth-pop groups of the latter '80's who allowed their music to be used as canon-fodder in the film, and especially to Chadha and the actors who brought such passion to their parts, who made it all feel real.

"Blinded by the Light" is mostly set in 1987. The film follows a British Paki Muslim teenager named Javed (Viveik Kalra), as he channels Springsteen's lyrics to make sense of his own life. The politics are often brought front and center, from the casual racism at Javed's school to the explicit racism by kids of all ages right at his doorstep, but also with the encouraging writing teacher who introduces the first day of class by taking a swipe at Margaret Thatcher, and the kind World War II veteran who lives next door. They're all cut-outs, of course, but that's ok; after all, as Javed notes early on: "Luton is a 4-letter word." Javed's best childhood friend has become a George Michael wannabe, but he gets a new best friend in school: Roops (Aaron Phagura), who is Sikh. One of the nice little touches of the movie is that it never explains anything whatsoever about their friendship, beyond their shared unapologetic obsession with Springsteen.

It helps, of course, that Javed is a talented writer completely independent of any influence from Springsteen. This leads to him getting published on the front page of the local newspaper, and, in possibly the film's least plausible sequence, winning a prize to go to a symposium at Monmouth College in New Jersey.

I admit, I laughed out loud when Monmouth College was mentioned; in 2005 that was the site of a symposium entirely dedicated to Springsteen called "Glory Days." It featured an "Ethnic Diversity and Springsteen" session, in which the highlight was a presentation by a young British Sikh woman. Writing for "The Guardian," (the paper that also hired Manzoor), she wrote,"Basically, the organisers want me to explain what a 55-year-old Catholic rock'n'roller from Noo Joisey has to do with me - a twentysomething Sikh girl from east London." I wonder if Manzoor was in the audience that afternoon.

Two songs in particular propel the movie's narrative forward: "Thunder Road," in which singing along to the Walkman with help from his friend's father helps him charm his girl Eliza, and a prank playing of "Born to Run" that is this film's version of the "Can't Buy Me Love" scene in "A Hard Day's Night." The "Born to Run" scene could have been cut, it wasn't needed... but it was still fun. The soundtrack contains 18 songs used in various spots of the film.

Now then, you ask, "is it accurate?"

In terms of historical accuracy, it sure does a lot better than several other recent films depicting hit makers of the '70's and '80's. I didn't know anything at all about the Paki Muslim experience in Luton, nor really about the British school system. I don't know if the Vauxhall cars were really that crappy, either. But most of the music felt right. Sure, it was mostly obvious cuts. Yes, there are two Springsteen songs performances presented in the movie that did not exist in 1987: his acoustic performance of "The Promised Land" is from a 2014 concert, and the recording of "Because the Night" wasn't completed until 2010. Javed also takes two tapes from Roops: Darkness on the Edge of Town and Born in the U.S.A., and somehow comes back quoting "The River." Accurately. We'll forgive him starting that "Born in the U.S.A." tape in the middle of side 2. "Thunder Road" switches midstream from the album version to the live version that appears on "Live 1975-85." Perhaps the most wonderfully goofy inclusion in the film is a snippet of The Whistle Test Special from 1984, which of course I recognized immediately, because if you were hard core back in the days before DVDs and youtube, these were the things you hunted down (the performance of "The River" is from a different video, for whatever that's worth). And don't pay super-close attention to the interpretation offered up in the film for the title song; yeah, I'm not buying that one, either.

There was just one thing that just felt wrong: the concert tickets. What happened to the concert tickets? How could that happen? If there are any truly unforgivable sins in this world not involving violence or death, that is one of them. Which is all I'm going to say about that scene.

The fan event had some extras, most notably presentations by Chadha and Manzoor explaining where they're coming from, and some relatively brief snippets from the red carpet premiere in Asbury Park last week, including Springsteen's appearance there.