Genre: Music/ Drama/ Comedy
Runtime: 118 minutes
Year: 2019
Starring: Viveik Kalra, Dean-Charles Chapman, Kit Reeve, David Hayman, Kulvinder Ghir, Nikita Mehta, Rob Brydon, Meera Ganatra, Hayley Atwell, Aaron Phagura
Description: In England in 1987, teenager Javed (Viveik Kalra) from an Asian family learns to live his life, understands his family and finds his own voice through the music of American rock star Bruce Springsteen.
Review: Don’t let resistance, adversity and misfortune in life stop you. Don’t give up your dreams and hope, even if they seem so far away. we all have the right to our own lives and feelings. There are just some of the messages Bruce Springsteen has put into his music over the years. It has earned him many dedicated fans worldwide. For the British-Pakistani Sarfraz Manzoor, Bruce became a lifelong inspiration and obsession. “Blinded by the Light” is based on his life, written by him and an ode to both Bruce Springsteen and how we can be connected anywhere in the world through empathy.
Safraz Manzoor, in the flm called Javed, moves to England when he is two-years old. He grows up in Luton, a town in South-East England. He doesn’t have a happy childhood and doesn’t British or Pakistani. Javed doesn’t have any connection with his birth country, but also with the countru he currently lives in. He wants to, but on the one hand there is his strict father, with whom he has a bad relationship and of whom he doesn’t like much. On the other hand there is the racism of white Britons, who call him ‘paki’, piss through the mailbox and once put a pig head on the local mosque.
But then Javed discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen, thanks to a friend. Not a Pakistani Muslim, but a Sikh of Indian descent who had the same identity struggle in the eighties. Bruce Springsteen’s music and especially his lyrics appeal to them so much that they almost feel that he wrote the songs for them. because even though Springsteen is a lot older and comes from America, he writes about universal feelings and themes from his own perspective, in such a way that Javed recognizes himself in it that he becomes an obsessed fan for life. Against the will of his family, Javed want to be a writer and journalist.
Besides a look at the cultural identity of second-generation immigrants and racism in England, “Blinded by the Light” is also mainly an ode to Springsteen and the strong points of his music and poetry. There are as relevant today as they were to Javed in the eighties, while the images of demonstration by the right-wing extremists are strongly reminiscent of similar (neo-) fascist movements today.
Nevertheless, “Blinded by the Light” is a cheerful, even sentimental feel-good film about finding an identity and daring to follow your dreams. Precisely the clichéd feel-good moments at the end of the film, and some of the early quarrels with his father, are fascinating and moving. With “Blinded by the Light” the real-life Javed gives the same hope and joy of life that Bruce Springsteen’s music once gave him.
Rating: 4,5 / 5
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