BLINDED BY THE LIGHT – Review by MaryAnn Johanson
Disaffected misfit teen saved by rock ’n’ roll? Woo-hoo! It’s a tale as old as time… or at least as old as, what, 1955? (This one is set in 1987.) Is this ever not good stuff? Is this ever not a story that most weirdos who came of age in the late 20th century can identify with?
There is a comforting familiarity for filmmaker Gurinder Chadha‘s GenXer in Blinded by the Light, but I also welcome the hearty rejection of the idea that nostalgia is universally a positive thing. Among all the feel-good danceableness here in the joy and the solace and the sense of being seen that pop music can bring, there’s a reminder for those of us who were teens in the 1980s — *waves hello* — that some important stuff really has not changed much since we were kids, despite that brief respite we got in the post–Cold War, pre–9/11 1990s. That might be a tad depressing, but it is at least authentic. We Xers may never get any decent retro reminiscence, what with everything that was once awful turning up new again these days, but hey, that’s just reality. We don’t need it sugarcoated, and we’ve never expected or wanted that. Continue reading…
EDITOR’S NOTE: You may be interested in reading Gurinder Chadha on Blinded by the Light, Human Dignity, Brexit and the Boss, an interview by Leslie Combemale.
