BEFORE: Well, we had our little end-of-summer vacation to Greece, and now we're back in the U.K. It's really another Brit-based week, I think 6 out of 7 films this week are set wholly or partially in the U.K. - I suppose that's bound to happen if I program by actor and I keep coming back to the same Brits again and again. I thought I hadn't progammed anything for "back to school" topic, yet here we go, the chain took care of that for me, with a film centered on a teenager who, presumably, attends high school. Well, that's all sorted, then, as the Brits say.
Rob Brydon carries over from "The Trip to Greece". But really, it should be "Get all these Brits cleared off my DVR" week...
THE PLOT: In England in 1987, a teenager from an Asian famiy learns to live his life, understand his family and find his own voice through the music of American rock star Bruce Springsteen.
AFTER: Really, something tells me this storyline shouldn't have worked - what could the music of Bruce Springsteen, by all accounts a very successful, multi-millionaire and multi-platinum selling American recording artist, have sung about that would be relevant to the lifestyle of a teen Pakistani immigrant, living in the UK in 1987? It seems like an odd combination of things, this character Javed doesn't seem to be in Bruce's demographic at all, not at first thought, anyway.
Ah, but Bruce didn't start out as a rich, successful recording sensation, I suppose nobody does - he built his career on being from the working class, or at least singing about being from the working class, and the story of how he broke into the music industry and had broad appeal for that working class is part of his story - and there were working class people in the UK, too, so at a time where the UK music industry was all glam and glitter in the late 80's, that scene may not have appealed to everyone, and perhaps some American music about the perils of the working class broke through, I don't know. "Born in the USA" is out just because of the title, I guess, but even that song talks about how the factory closed down and there's no work available, plus while I'm at it, let me mention Vietnam and my dead brother.
Really, the common denominator here is complaining - and who's better at complaining than Americans? If you think about it, we built a whole country around complaining - the Boston Tea Party was one big protest, then around the same time there was the Stamp Act and the Intolerable Acts, plenty to complain about where Great Britain was concerned, and perhaps Javed is feeling some of that, too, while living in the UK. And what's the Declaration of Independence but a giant complaint against the King, written out longhand in a formal style? And all along, we Americans have retained the right to complain, even about our own government, and that covers everything from anti-war protests to Black Lives Matter. Then the Brits maybe learned a thing or two from us Yanks and let a protest against the EU, then another protest against Brexit, because they just couldn't make up their minds, but they knew they needed to complain about something, it's how we advance society forward.
Javed hears certain things that call out to him from the song "Dancing in the Dark", like "sick of sitting 'round here, trying to write this book..." and OK, he was trying to write poems, not a book, but I guess we all hear how things might apply to us. "Want to change my clothes, my hair, my face..." - sure, if Javed didn't look the way he did, then he'd encounter less prejudice in Luton, where there was racism against Pakistani immigrants. But that's not really what Springsteen had in mind when he wrote the song, he probably just didn't want to look like Bruce Springsteen any more. (You know, Bruce, you can change your clothes and your hair, but I'm sorry, doing something about your face might be a little harder...). So yeah, there are some connections here between Bruce's lyrics and what might be going on in Javed's life, but I think some of them are a bit of a stretch. The film is drawing some connections where there may not be any.
The film's title, of course, comes from a Bruce Springsteen song, one he wrote, however it didn't really become popular until it was covered by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, who changed a few of the lyrics - or perhaps they misheard them, because Bruce does tend to mumble, and there are a few lyrics I never really understood myself until I watched this film with the captions on. (Oh, so THAT'S what he's singing there...). In "Blinded by the Light" Bruce sang "Cut loose like a deuce, another runner in the night." but Manfred Mann changed that to "Revved up like a deuce", and of course many people misheard THAT as "wrapped up like a douche", because they didn't know that "deuce" is slang for a hot-rod car, a two-seater, like a little deuce coupe.
Manfred Mann's Earth Band also added the basic two-finger piano lesson tune "Chopsticks" to Bruce's song, "Blinded by the Light", because they couldn't figure out how to get from the chorus to the next verse smoothly. The band's drummer recognized the basic chords needed, though, and chimed in "play Chopsticks over it" and damn, if he wasn't right. A tune that anyone who knows how to play on the piano saved the day, racist title or no - but if you listen to later live versions of the band playing that song, occasionally they would also drop in a notable bit of Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and that's a hell of a lot classier.
Anyway, that's two films in the same week set in the UK in the 80's, and both feature groups of racist skinheads and I suppose both are symbolically against Thatcher in some way - I never understand what the big beef was with her, but we had Reagan, so I guess I get it? The lesson of the film is that it's OK to really dig that musician you like, but not to the point where you're not there for family functions or family emergencies. Also you can turn that hobby of yours into a career, but it's also going to take some dedication, you can't just coast, because if you want to take that dream vacation, it's going to cost you.
Did this movie get turned into a Broadway musical? If not, I suppose it's just a matter of time...
Also starring Viveik Kalra (last seen in "Voyagers"), Hayley Atwell (last seen in "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness"), Kulvinder Ghir (last seen in "Bend It Like Beckham"), Nell Williams (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Dean-Charles Chapman (last seen in "The King"), Aaron Phagura, Meera Ganatra, Nikita Mehta, Tara Divina, Sally Phillips (last seen in "Birthday Girl"), David Hayman (last seen in "Smilla's Sense of Snow"), Billy Barratt (last seen in "Mary Poppins Returns"), Ronak Singh Chadha Berges, Kit Reeve, Lorraine Ashbourne (last seen in "Child 44"), Jeff Mirza (last seen in "Eternals"), Frankie Fox, Scott Folan (last seen in "Cyrano"), Marcus Brigstocke (last seen in "Love Actually"), Olivia Poulet, Leo Shirley, Kumiko Kaur Chadha Berges, James Ballanger (last seen in "Without Remorse"), Vincent Andriano, Kriss Dosanjh (last seen in "Dirty Pretty Things"), Paulo Andre Aragao, Kas Meghani, Daniel Surridge-Smith, with archive footage of Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Air"), Bruce Springsteen (last seen in "Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road"), Margaret Thatcher (last seen in "Nothing Compares")
RATING: 5 out of 10 cassette tapes
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