Blinded by the Light (Gurinder Chadha, 2019)

Nell Williams, Viveik Kaira, and Aaron Phagura in Blinded by the Light

Cast: Viveik Kaira, Kulvider Ghir, Meera Ganatra, Nell Williams, Aaron Phagura, Dean-Charles Chapman, Hayley Atwell, Nikita Mehta, Tara Divina, David Hayman, Rob Brydon, Sally Phillips, Marcus Brigstocke, Olivia Poulet, Frankie Fox. Screenplay: Sarfraz Manzoor, Gurinder Chadha, Paul Mayeda Berges, based on a book by Manzoor. Cinematography: Ben Smithard. Production design: Nick Ellis. Film editing: Justin Krish. Music: A.R. Rahman.

Blinded by the Light is old-fashioned in several ways. For one, it's a feel-good movie in times that expect a little more edge to movies than it possesses. For another, it's devoted to a kind of idolatry of Bruce Springsteen's music that even in the year it depicts, 1987, was beginning to be a little old-hat. It's awash with nostalgia, especially when it tries to portray the triumph of innocence in the face of the economic hardship and unchecked racism of the Thatcher-Reagan era. The protagonist, Javed Khan (Viveik Kaira), is a British-Pakistani teenager whose father (Kulvider Ghir) gets laid off from his factory job and wants his only son to better the family's fortunes by upward mobility, which he defines as becoming a lawyer or an accountant or an estate agent. But Javed wants to write, and when he's introduced to the songs of Springsteen, he blossoms, leading to the eventual showdown with the old man. In the end, everything is resolved somewhat tritely by a Big Speech scene, in which Javed expresses both his respect for his father and his determination to be himself -- although being himself consists largely of trying to become a Pakistani Springsteen. Writer-director Gurinder Chadha has made this movie before, when it was called Bend It Like Beckham (2002). Like that film, Blinded by the Light is hard to resist, especially if you enjoy the early songs of Springsteen, which helped me endure the Reagan years the way they smooth out the Thatcher years for Javed. But resist it we should, if we want our movies to be more truthful and less candy-coated, which I think Springsteen himself would prefer.