"Blinded By the Light" combines an infectious spirit with a serious message to create a feel-good movie. It personalizes the lyrics of some of Bruce Springsteen's best-known tunes and illustrates the universality not only of the music but of the underlying ideas. Director Burner Chadha (Bend It Like Beckham) brings a little Bollywood flavor to a familiar story of the generational clash between an artistic son and a traditional father. In this case, Javed (Viveik Kalra) is a 16-year old with a love of poetry, Springsteen's music and a radical girl named Eliza (Nell Williams). Malik (Kulvinder Ghir) is his father, a factory worker for 16 years who immigrated from Pakistan to England in search of a better life for his son, who now finds himself out of work and forced to rely on his wife's sewing to make ends meet. Seeing no practicality in Javed's love of writing, Malik pushes his son toward economics and a good career.
The script is loosely based on the life and experiences of journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, who claims to have seen Springsteen in concert 150 times and whose memoir, Greetings from Bury Park, provided a template for the movie. He co-wrote the screenplay with Chadha and her husband, Paul Mayeda Berges. "Blinded By the Light" is a charming coming-of-age story that illustrates the power of music to provoke change not only in individuals but on a larger scale.
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