One of the running themes of “Blinded by the Light” is how Bruce Springsteen was considered irrelevant by British teens in 1987 — but the lengthy standing ovation for the film’s premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in Jaunary and the $15 million sale that followed the next day made it clear that there’s a new Boss.
And “Blinded by the Light” is pulling out of here to win, to quote a certain Jersey boy.
Adapted from the terrific Sarfraz Manzoor memoir “Greetings From Bury Park” and directed by Gurinder Chadha with the same humanistic zest she brought to “Bend It Like Beckham,” “Blinded by the Light” is corny, silly, as overblown as one of Springsteen’s grandest anthems and damn near irresistible.
You might shake your head at characters breaking into full-throated versions of “The Promised Land,” “Thunder Road” and especially “Born to Run,” but if you don’t surrender to this grand lunacy, you don’t have a heart. And even if you aren’t a Springsteen devotee, you’ll likely be moved by a story that’s less about Bruce than it is about the way pop music can reverberate in our lives and fuel our dreams.
Viveik Kalra plays Javed, a shy, aspiring writer living in the English town of Luton in the Margaret Thatcher era. His parents moved to England from Pakistan, and the family is wildly unwelcome in a time that saw the rise of the anti-immigrant National Front. What’s even worse for Javed is that his father expects him to be a good Pakistani boy, when he wants to write and do impractical things and maybe even kiss a girl.
It’s the era of the Pet Shop Boys and Cutting Crew and Wham, but a chance encounter at his high school leaves Javed with cassette tapes of “Born in the U.S.A.” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town,” and one night he listens to them and his world changes.
The film is smart enough to know that “Dancing in the Dark” may have been a big pop hit with a dance beat, but it was also a song about sheer desperation — so Javed listens, the words spill off the cassette and onto the screen around him, and then he goes outside, listens to “The Promised Land” in a raging windstorm and finds the words he wants to live by: “Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man/And I believe in the promised land.”
The scene, by the way, is completely over the top — but like the work of director John Carney in indie musicals like “Once” and “Sing Street,” it is gloriously, vibrantly alive, a celebration of how potent it can be when the right piece of music hits the right set of ears.
And so we buy it — hell, we love it — when Javed begins speaking in Springsteen lyrics, when “Thunder Road” turns into a flea-market serenade, when “Born to Run” sweeps first the high school, then the whole town off its feet. Javed is drawn to Springsteen because of his lyrics, but the music helps the film achieves true, joyous, unironic rock ‘n’ roll liftoff in these moments.
Chadha is smart in the way she uses the music and chooses which versions of the songs to employ to maximum effect; an acoustic version of “The Promised Land” brilliantly captures the mood of one sequence, and while you might not notice when “Thunder Road” switches from the studio version to a live rendition from 1975, you’ll feel the difference.
In the end, though, Springsteen fades into the background as much as he can in a movie that uses 17 of his songs and is named after one of them. “Blinded by the Light” is really an affecting family story, a coming-of-age story against a background of tradition, and most of all a father-son story in the mold of, well, the father-son stories told in a whole lot of Bruce Springsteen songs.
Is this small, charming film worth $15 million, the biggest deal at this year’s Sundance? Don’t ask me — I’m a guy who wrote a story for the Washington Post titled “Confessions of a Springsteen Fanatic” a couple of years before Sarfraz Manzoor or his character ever got excited about Bruce.
So I’ll admit a little bias here, but that’s not going to stop me from embracing “Blinded by the Light” as a joyous, moving tribute to the way pop songs can detonate in our lives.
15 Biggest Box Office Hits That Premiered at Sundance, From 'The Blair Witch Project' to 'Get Out' (Photos)
Sundance is the biggest market for indie films around, and for good reason. The festival has a history of finding the quirky, independent crowd-pleaser that goes on to be a box office smash. 2020 saw a $17.5 million sale for the Andy Samberg comedy "Palm Springs," which proved to be one of Hulu's biggest movies ever. And while some films fizzle at the box office despite their festival hype, many more manage to sustain that buzz all the way until Oscar season. Here are a few that made a splash at both Park City and for wide audiences. All box office figures are domestic numbers.
15. "A Walk in the Woods" (2015) - $29.5 million • It should come as no surprise that Robert Redford premiered a movie he starred in at his own festival. But he also proved that he still carries some box office clout.
Broad Green Pictures
14. "(500) Days of Summer" (2009) - $35.9 million • Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel starred in this inventive indie rom-com from director Marc Webb that Fox Searchlight distributed to make it one of the sleeper indie hits of the summer of 2009.
Fox Searchlight Pictures
13. "In the Bedroom" (2001) - $35.9 million • "In the Bedroom" was the first film to ever score a Best Picture Oscar nomination after making its premiere at Sundance, and its four additional nominations -- including for Sissy Spacek, Tom Wilkinson and Marisa Tomei -- were the most received by any Sundance film until the release of "Precious" in 2009.
Miramax
12. "Brooklyn" (2015) - $38.3 million • The period-piece romance starring Saoirse Ronan as an Irish immigrant to New York wowed audiences and buyers, with another heated bidding war ensuing that ultimately went to Fox Searchlight for $9 million.
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
11. "The Big Sick" (2017) - $42.8 million • Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon's debut screenplay about their own romance sparked a bidding war among buyers, eventually landing with Amazon for $12 million, which was only the second-highest acquisition of that year behind Netflix's pickup of "Mudbound."
Lionsgate/Amazon
10. "Hereditary" (2018) - $44.1 million • The biggest box office hit of Sundance 2018 was a midnight screening picked up by A24. "Hereditary" earned acclaim from critics and audiences alike for its disturbing portrayal of grief and its destructive power, and was declared by many to be the finest performance of Toni Collette's career.
A24
9. "Napoleon Dynamite" (2004) - $44.5 million • The deadpan, oddball comedy "Napoleon Dynamite" made a star out of Jon Heder and went on to become a cult hit as well as a big success, considering its minuscule budget of just $400,000.
Fox Searchlight Pictures
8. "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire" (2009) - $47.6 million • Lee Daniels' heart-wrenching film "Precious" made such waves at Sundance that Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey announced that they would be leading the film's marketing, jumping on board as executive producers. It made Gabourey Sidibe a star and Mo'Nique an Oscar winner for her fiery performance as Precious' cruel mother.
Lionsgate Films
7. "Manchester by the Sea" (2016) - $47.7 million • Amazon paid a whopping $10 million for the rights to release Kenneth Lonergan's "Manchester by the Sea." It went on to make the company a major player on the indie festival scene and even netted an Oscar win for Lonergan and its male lead, Casey Affleck.
Amazon
6. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994) - $52.7 million • This beloved comedy with Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell was made quickly and cheaply. With $245.7 million worldwide, it was the highest grossing British film in history at the time of its release.
Gramercy
5. "Saw" (2004) - $55.2 million • It's hard to believe that a movie that has spawned a half-dozen sequels actually made its premiere as an indie film at Sundance, but Lionsgate nabbed it days before the festival, launching the career of director James Wan in the process.
Lionsgate
4. "The Butterfly Effect" (2004) - $57.9 million • Ashton Kutcher was at the peak of his fame when he appeared at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. Though critics weren't kind to the movie or to Kutcher's performance in the psychological thriller, it went on to be a box office success, making $96.1 million worldwide.
New Line Cinema
3. "Little Miss Sunshine" (2006) - $59.8 million • "Little Miss Sunshine" might be the quintessential Sundance movie -- a quirky, happy-go-lucky family comedy about an offbeat group of individuals -- but it would also prove to be a massive crowd-pleaser. Fox Searchlight acquired it for $10.5 million in a heated bidding war, which at the time was among the highest amounts spent for a Sundance title. The film also won two Oscars, including for Alan Arkin, and earned a nomination for its child star Abigail Breslin.
Fox Searchlight
2. "The Blair Witch Project" (1999) - $140.5 million • When it first premiered at Sundance, "The Blair Witch Project" was hyped as though the actors in the film were either "deceased" or "missing." Critics raved about how the horror film introduced the "found footage" technique to the movies, leading Artisan Films to acquire it for $1.1 million. The film then received months of publicity and word of mouth attention that it was actually based on real events. And because it was made on a shoestring budget of just $60,000 before grossing $250 million worldwide, it has subsequently become one of the most successful independent films of all time.
Artisan
1. "Get Out" (2017) - $176.0 million • Jordan Peele's debut film "Get Out" ended up being a studio film distributed by Universal, but it earned its indie cred by premiering at Sundance before surprising audiences with its record-setting box office run a month later in February 2017.
Universal
1 of 16
Films like ”Precious,“ ”Little Miss Sunshine“ and ”Napoleon Dynamite“ all made noise in Park City before hitting the box office
Sundance is the biggest market for indie films around, and for good reason. The festival has a history of finding the quirky, independent crowd-pleaser that goes on to be a box office smash. 2020 saw a $17.5 million sale for the Andy Samberg comedy "Palm Springs," which proved to be one of Hulu's biggest movies ever. And while some films fizzle at the box office despite their festival hype, many more manage to sustain that buzz all the way until Oscar season. Here are a few that made a splash at both Park City and for wide audiences. All box office figures are domestic numbers.