He’s a guru whose image gets plastered all over Javed’s cozy bedroom. When Javed clandestinely buys tickets for an upcoming Springsteen concert, his father discovers them and rips them up, berating Javed in front of the entire family for being selfish. This dramedy is based on journalist Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir, Greetings from Bury Park: Race, Religion and Rock n’ Roll. (RNS) — Then too, a Democrat was charged with being godless.Kulvinder Ghir, left, as Malik and Viveik Kalra as Javed in New Line Cinema’s “Blinded by the Light,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. It’s a brilliant blending of Hollywood and Bollywood aesthetics, as Roops, Javed and his girlfriend Eliza (Nell Williams) run through the streets and dance in fields while belting out Springsteen.Chadha brings the two forms together brilliantly. Conscious of its own corniness, the movie taps into the bubbly Bollywood over-the-top style in a fashion that allows the audience to laugh at the unfamiliar aesthetic, grapple with the joyousness and then grow right into it as the film continues.As much as it is an immigrant's story, "Blinded by the Light" is a tale of the father-son struggle. Woven throughout the film, these scenes capture the political climate three decades ago but resonate with today's resurgent racism.To add to Javed's sense of dislocation, more than once his father reminds his teenage son that he is Pakistani, not British.The family’s financial struggles, the racism they endure and Javed's lackluster social life all put the audience securely in Javed's rooting section, and Director Gurinder Chadha, known best for 2003's "Bend It Like Beckham," capitalizes on our sympathies with a pivot into the unlikely: An unhappy Javed runs into a Sikh classmate named Roops (Aaron Phagur) who introduces him to “The Boss”: Bruce Springsteen.The distant American icon comes alive for a Sikh and a Muslim in a British factory town and changes their lives forever.Encountering Springsteen's music is a kind of religious experience for Javed. "On his pilgrimage to the sacred sites of Springsteen's youth and early career, Javed undergoes a transformation, finding the space he needs to grow into himself and find reconciliation with his father. FRIDAY AUGUST 16, 2019. Photo by Nick WallDirector Gurinder Chadha, center, with actors Viveik Kalra, left, and Aaron Phagura on the set of “Blinded by the Light.” Photo by Nick WallActor Aaron Phagura, from left, journalist Sarfraz Manzoor, Patti Scialfa, Bruce Springsteen, Director Gurinder Chadha and actor Viveik Kalra at the premiere of "Blinded by the Light" on Aug. 7, 2019, in Asbury Park, NJ. All rights reserved. Bruce is a prophet whose words help guide Javed through moments of immense discomfort. (Nick Wall) There's a scene in the new film Blinded by the Light when the protagonist drops an unsolicited essay about Bruce Springsteen on the desk of his school's newspaper editor. Exploring the musical legacy of Prince and beyondIt's a line that drips with dramatic irony, because the story surrounding it — set in 1987 and revolving around Springsteen's music — absolutely resounds in 2019.At school, Javed literally bumps into Roops (Aaron Phagura), a classmate who is Sikh and is a Bruce Springsteen fan. Aside from normal, teenage pubertal problems, his woes include poverty, a stifled religious household, and racial discrimination. The town is Luton, then known for its auto manufacturing in the desultory out-years of Margaret Thatcher's Britain.Javed is a British Pakistani teenager whose father (Kulvinder Ghir) has been laid off from making auto parts and whose mother (Meera Ganatra) helps make ends meet by working as a seamstress out of the family's home.Javed’s social life would be non-existent if it were not for Matt, his neighbor and childhood best friend, and even this relationship causes Javed envy. And he’s a savior who ultimately helps Javed transcend his own conditionality and discover himself — “The Promised Land,” as Springsteen calls it. Javed (Viveik Kalra) is a Pakistani immigrant living in the Bury Park neighborhood of Luton, a small town north of London, in 1987. (RNS) — The Democrats' presumptive vice presidential nominee rose out of a network of women’s organizations and movements, churches and loving communities by which Black women have transformed themselves since Reconstruction.