Movie Review: Blinded by the Light

Blinded by the Light

Director: Gurinder Chadha

Starring: Viveik Kalra, Kulvinder Ghir, Meera Ganatra, Aaron Phagura, Dean-Charles Chapman, Nikita Mehta, Nell Williams, Tara Divina

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 117 minutes

I went to my first mystery screening last night. I kept running through the possibilities of what the film might be in my head throughout the entire day. Could it be The Lion King? Could it be Once Upon a Time in Hollywood? Could it be Hobbs & Shaw? As it turns out, it was none of these. It was Gurinder Chandra’s newest film, Blinded by the Light. I considered leaving briefly, simply because it wasn’t a film I was interested in but then I decided to stay. I thought “This could actually be a really good film”. Sadly, I was disappointed.

Blinded By The Light is the story of a repressed British-Pakistani growing up in the 1980s, under Thatcher and during a time where foreigners weren’t exactly welcomed in Britain. It’s a story of oppression and acceptance, through the lens of Bruce Springsteen’s music. The problem I have with it is that the way it chooses to do so and the music it chooses simply don’t really fit tonally with the film. I’m not particularly familiar with Springsteen’s music, I know the odd song such as “Born in the U.S.A”, but even a hardcore fan of his music would likely get bored with how often his songs are used as a narrative framing device throughout. At times, it comes across as a 15 million dollar music video (of course, one has to wonder quite how much of that budget was splurged on Springsteen’s music), but when it concentrates on the political issues surrounding that specific period of British history it’s brilliantly done. A full drama with this cast could have been great, but we’ll never know because instead they were wasted on an ego trip for a 69-year-old man.

The performances are for the most part, decent. Vivek Kalra stars as Javed, the main star of the film who discovers Springsteen after his friend Roops (Aaron Phangura) gives him a cassette tape of “The Boss”. Both of their performances are easily the best part of the film, and Javed is a well developed likable character. While Phangura’s performance is sound, he’s not in the film anywhere near enough to develop his character beyond ‘Classmate’. We’re supposed to believe these two are the best of friends, but we’re not shown any of this, really. Nell Williams is decent as activist and girlfriend of Javed, Eliza, and easily gets some of the most development out of the side characters (except for Javed’s father, but we’ll get to him later).  Most of Javed’s family are forgettable at best, with the aforementioned exception of his father. Javed’s Father (Played by Kulvinder Ghir) is a wonderfully written character, definitely, the best of the entire film (with the character development to support him) and Ghir’s performance is brilliantly understated throughout. You can feel the palpable tension he adds to any scene he’s in with his son, and it makes it even better when he inevitably turns around his ideals to see how happy his son’s desires make him.

There were several moments throughout the film where I openly cringed at how cliché the script was, and at times some of the performances fell quite flat. There’s also a number of characters throughout that simply aren’t developed enough, but none of these flaws are enough to detract from the fact I did enjoy the film.

Blinded by the Light is a fun, if ultimately very flawed, movie. It spends too long concentrating on Springsteen and not on the characters themselves, but when it does concentrate on the actual people involved in the (based on a true story!) film, it shines. A saddening insight into the potential that the film had, but still a decent watch nevertheless.