What an interesting movie! The plot isn’t really a “plot” as such, it is just a series of things that happen to our hero after he starts his journey to finding his own identity. I recommend reading my No Spoilers review if you want to avoid spoilers, but honestly, reading this review first won’t “ruin” the movie for you, because it is about so much more than plot.
Whole movie in one paragraph:
Our hero is a working class British-Pakistani teenager during the late 80s in Britain. His mother does sewing piece work at home, his sister works in a shop after school, he has a job during every holiday, and his father works in a factory, and they have just enough to keep their head above water. The same time our hero starts advanced classes to prepare for university entrance, his father gets laid off. He feels stuck, and then a new friend (a fellow desi, a Sikh) at school gives him a Bruce Sprintsteen tape and his whole world opens up. He uses the songs to inspire himself and stop being afraid. He shows his teacher his writing and she encourages and guides him. He gets the confidence to invite the smart interesting girl in class on a date and then to kiss her. He also gets closer to his sister, who is sneaking out to daytime discos and secretly dating a boy, realizing that there are other ways to rebel besides Bruce Springsteen music. And he stands up to his father and insists on taking the unpaid internship at the local newspaper over break instead of a paying job. His cousin-sister gets married the same day as a protest march against immigrants, his father is injured in the scrimmage and he misses the whole thing because he is buying Springsteen tickets. After that, he briefly breaks up with his girlfriend and gives up on his dreams. Until he is given the chance to travel to New Jersey after winning a writing contest. He tells his father that he is going to New Jersey and his father forbids him from coming home again after. He and his Sikh friend go to New Jersey and visit Springsteen’s home town, then return home. He lives with his Sikh friend instead of going home, until at the end of the school term he is being given a prize for his essay on Springsteen and starts to read it when he sees his family arrive in the back of the room. Instead, he explains that the essay is no longer fully true, Bruce Springsteen changed his life, but so did his father, and he is a result of his upbringing and his parents’ sacrifices. The family is reunited, and he makes up with his girlfriend too when he realizes she was the one who invited his family. He returns home and then leaves with his father driving him to university, his life finally beginning with the blessing of his family and the inspiration of Bruce Springsteen.
Really, nothing actually happens-happens in this movie. Our hero starts out planning to finish his advanced classes and go to university and study writing, even if his family is against it. And it ends with him going to university. His father loses his job and the family is struggling for money, and at the end they are still struggling for money and his father still doesn’t have a job. Hatred is still on the rise in the country.
But it’s too much for one person to change the world, or even change their family. All you can really do is change yourself. At the start, Viveik Kalra our hero is worn down by life. He sits in his room afraid to even go next door to a party. He writes his poetry but doesn’t believe it is any good. He has his university plan and he is going through with it, but in a spirit of desperation not hope. The world is too dark for anything to change, his father will never see him for who he is or let him do what he wants, and the world around them is getting uglier and angrier. And then he hears Springsteen lyrics and suddenly finds something that gives him fearlessness, joy, hope, strength.
That’s what art is supposed to do, that’s what religion is supposed to do, that’s what something or anything in your life HAS to do. The human person cannot survive without a little bit of magic in your heart. The magic may not change anything, but in another way it changes everything.
As this story unfolded I was surprised by how personal it felt to me. That moment of inspiration and magic and understanding, I had that. At the same age and in similar circumstances, I found Indian film when I was 19, starting college, and right after my father lost his job of 17 years. My life was really confused in that moment, I was trying to find my own way in a world that felt like it didn’t have any strong certainty to it any more. On the one hand, college was opening up my mind to new friendships and new thoughts and possibilities. On the other hand, everything I had known before that was ripped apart when the safety net of my parents went away. Indian film shouldn’t have been the thing that made a difference for me, there was no logical reason to it, no direct connection to my life at all. But it was about families, about love, about growing up, and that spoke to me.
It’s not really personal to me though, is it? When you are 19, you start to see your parents as human and the world you grew up in as flawed and insecure. You need something to help you keep going when everything you knew before is in tatters. And you either find that thing, or you drown. For me, it was Indian movies and my father losing his job. For someone else, it could be their parents’ divorce and Korean pop music, or moving across country and Elvis. You need that thing, that strong sustenance deep at the core of yourself, and then you can look out and honesty see the world for what it is in your own eyes, not the eyes of your parents.
And that’s why the ending doesn’t quite ring true to me. Chadha likes these endings, these tidy “family and dreams can all happen together” endings. Our hero or heroine stands up for themselves and gives a speech about their dreams but also not wanting to disappoint the family and somehow it all works out. But in this case, I don’t know if I believe it could be that tidy.
This movie is about a journey from fear to joy, to freedom, to hope. And that is not a journey that first generation immigrant parents, especially ones living in a world where they are surrounded by hate crimes, will necessarily be able to understand. And it is not a journey that the second generation can necessarily take unless you leave your parents behind, at least for a little while.
This film did what it intended to do, it told a deeply personal story in a way that could resonate universally. And part of that was tying it all up in a neat little bow, giving us the nice ending of the family all happily cheering him on as he went away to become a writer. And giving our hero that speech at the end that acknowledges his parents’ bravery as immigrants and the immigrant experience, integrating his personal identity within the larger whole of his family.
But there is another more honest version of this film that could exist. And in that version, our hero never returns home. He lives with his friend and then goes away to college. And years later, after his new independent self is firmly in place and his new independent life is firmly in place, that is when he returns home and begins again. There is no heartfelt embrace between father and son, just a long slow effort of bridging an impossible gap. It’s not very filmi and it’s not very happy, but that is the reality. Sometimes the process of finding yourself, discovering who you are deep inside and then looking out at the world with fresh eyes, cuts you off from folks you used to love and the life you used to live. And opens you up to new people and a new life.
This movie honestly shows a dark time and an ugly world. But it also honestly shows the moments of light in that world. Early on, we see an elderly white neighbor going in and out of his house, looking out our hero and his family. In this place and time, it feels dangerous and hateful. But then he finds one of our hero’s poems and comes to him and tells him he liked it, it spoke to him. He only has a few more scenes, congratulating him for getting his name in the paper. But it’s a reminder that we can and should expect good in the people around us. Approach the world without fear because there may not be anything to fear.
That happens over and over again. Our hero and his friend are stopped by security at the New Jersey airport and reveal themselves to be Bruce Springsteen fans and are immediately waved through. The principal of his school lets them off with a warning for blasting Springsteen music through the school speakers. His white supervisor at the internship asks if he is Muslim, but it is just because he wants help writing a story from the Muslim perspective. If he had stayed fearful, locked inside of his house, he never would have known all of these people, these people who appreciate and help him.
My favorite moment is when our hero takes his sister to a daytime concert. It’s daytime because it is a Bhangra group and the Asian teenagers couldn’t get out to come to the concert unless it was during school hours when their parents wouldn’t be suspicious. It’s a whole room filled with British Asian kids being free and joyful and themselves. And our hero puts on his Springsteen headphones for a moment to listen to his music, then takes them off and instead just exists in the world, listens to the music around him and watches the people who are there. It’s not about locking himself up in his father’s world, and it’s not about being locked in his own world of Springsteen either. It’s about just opening yourself up to joy, to life, to love, to everything.
dontcallitbollywood 
I saw this with my husband and two kids this weekend and everyone enjoyed it. The little ones got a bit restless toward the end and covered their eyes during the kissing bits, but they were interested and talked about it after, especially the parent/child moments. My husband really liked it, I think it was the era and the politics plus the music and family story for him. I liked it but not as much as Bend It Like Beckham – I can’t figure out if it’s the actor I didn’t connect with as much, or the character. Maybe a little of both. Maybe also a bit about the kinds of choices the oldest son of the family had to make vs. the kinds of choices the youngest daughter of the family had to make, and what it meant for each of them to defy their parents’ wishes and choose their own path. And maybe I missed some of the strong friend dynamic that Parminder and Keira had – there are two important friendships in this film but neither of them is as strong in the script.
Agree that this story leans into the ugly side of what it means to be rejected by part of the society you live in, and that was powerful. She built in so many small moments that added up. It was also really good at showing the complex side of how history (the WWII veteran neighbor), economics (layoffs and unemployment for Javed and his father but also for everyone around them), and prejudice can interact with each other, not always in the obvious ways we would expect. I liked all those points where the movie played with our expectations – of the neighbor, of the white friend Matt, of the girlfriend’s parents – and in each case subverted the typical plot point just a little.
Also agreed about the mother, she’s the main actor who stood out to me, along with Shazia, though I did like the teacher too now that you mention it.
About the ending, I think you have to consider the present context into which this film is being released. I don’t know the real story and it might be truer to have the parents not come around in time for a moving speech and a happy reunion, but Chadha is also showing Muslim family dynamics and Muslim parents to an audience that probably doesn’t get much exposure to them, in a moment with clear historical parallels, and it feels like it would carry an extra weight of judgment to have the parents depicted as somehow less loving and positive than the other adults in the film – the neighbor, the teacher, the principal, Matt’s father, etc.
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Yaaaaay! A comment! I was hoping for someone to talk with about this movie.
Interesting about comparing this to Bend it Like Beckham. I think that was part of what made me feel like Gurinder successfully told someone else’s story, she swung the focus straight towards the coming of age of a young man instead of a young woman. But as a young woman, I also was interested in the sister. I feel like the film treaded a line of staying focused on the story of the protagonist, while still acknowledging his sister. There’s another version possible where she was completely invisible in the story, a silent dialogueless presence in the background. Anyway, I like to think that once our hero gets out and gets to college, he works harder to support his sister’s struggles and make sure she gets to go to the college of her choice as well.
Agree about the subversion of the plot points. There were so many little moments I loved. Like Matt’s Dad being so wonderful and supportive (when you might think he would be a lower class angry type), and then Matt pointing out that Javed’s loyalty should have been to him no matter what, just like Matt had always been loyal to Javed. Matt comes off as this kind of cartoonish oblivious guy, and he is that, but he is also a really loyal kind friend. And the girlfriend relationship was really interesting, because the movie did not sugarcoat how temporary their connection was, or how important it was, if that makes sense? They were just kids who were the two smartest kids in class and with hormones going wild, but that was kind of it for their connection. And that was okay, it was still a big part of growing up and learning who they were away from their family and maybe if they kept dating through college, it could become something real.
The ending is a puzzle for me. You are absolutely right, a downer ending that acknowledged the complexity of their relationship wouldn’t fit with what the movie wanted to do. Maybe instead a time leap would have worked for me? Bigger than the leap we already had, something like taking him to college graduation? Because I could believe after 4 years of slow thaw, he and his father could make some kind of peace. But then we lose the clarity of all the other relationships, like I wouldn’t expect his English teacher to show up at his college graduation. Maybe something smaller and more bittersweet like seeing his father secretly cutting something out of the paper about his award indicating that he is proud after all and working towards acceptance of his son’s dreams? But there is also such a beautiful perfection to opening with him dreaming of taking the highway to London and ending with his father driving him. This ending was really good in a lot of ways, but I feel like there is a better one out there that I just can’t quite reach.
On Mon, Aug 19, 2019 at 4:34 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I can’t think of another ending I would have preferred, but I think that feeling you describe does get at the same thing that made me not quite connect with the story. Bend it Like Beckham has a lot of complex family dynamics but the stakes are lower, both inside the family and between the family and the world. It’s the sister not getting to marry her boyfriend, and Anupam not getting the same opportunities at work. In that kind of story, a happy ending feels possible and even satisfying, it feels like those kinds of conflicts could be wrapped up with a neat bow in a few heartfelt scenes. With this film, it’s all more existential. Javed gets kicked out of the house, the family’s financial situation feels dire and without hope it will get better anytime soon. Having the same kind of ending doesn’t feel satisfying in the same way, because those kinds of conflicts are much harder to resolve. For me, Javed’s connection with Springsteen also didn’t feel liberating in proportion to the challenges he faced in the same way soccer did to Parminder – maybe because it’s harder to film, especially without a big cathartic concert scene where you see the connection with the music is a shared escape from reality across all kinds of different people suffering through the time and place. When I think back, all the plot points are in place to show how finding Springsteen set him on the path to his future, but I don’t know, the emotion of it was lacking a bit of potency for me. Except in the “daytimer” scene, you’re right that felt different and more real.
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Maybe it’s the choice to focus more on his family life and struggle instead of the other parts of his life? The things Javed achieves over the course of the film really do set him up for a successful happy life. He gets into a really good university, he has a byline in the local paper already, and won an international conference award, plus a prize at the local school. I respect the decision to let those things happen easily, to show that Javed was his own worst enemy, all he had to do was believe in himself and good things would come. But it also meant that we ended up with this “happy ending” of the family that didn’t feel real, instead of looking at the actually happy ending of Javed being well on his way to a successful career as a writer, just like Parminder was on her way to being a professional soccer player.
What if there was at least one scene with either the teacher or the principal honestly telling Javed how he was set up for life now? Drawing out for him (and the audience) how he had reached his happy ending already, was just to caught up in his own misery to fully see it? In Bend it Like Beckham we had all these scenes explaining that the American college team could lead to a professional league either in America or England. What if there was a scene with someone at school explaining to Javed that all he had to do was keep up his writing at the same level in college and he would be graduating top of his class with newspapers vying for him? Would that give us that glimmer of light in the bleakness that made the final family happy ending less of a clunker?
Or, how about this? Rahul Dholakia takes a second run at this script for Gurinder Chadha, and she takes a second run at Raees, and both movies make more sense?
On Tue, Aug 20, 2019 at 9:55 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Oh dear, would Rahul Dholakia know how to pull out a happy ending? He does get the spectacle of the crowd, though. I liked that Chadha didn’t over dramatize the moments of threat, up to and including the father getting punched at the skinhead march, those were better played small because the impact on the characters was still big. Maybe a crowd scene of some sort when he’s in the phase of living alone with his Sikh friend? Like they missed the concert but they’re out at a bar trying to recreate the magic (!) of their NJ trip (I go to Asbury Park all the time, so crazy to see it as this dream destination in a film) and they end up in a pub with the music turned loud and manage to get a bunch of Brits from all ages and walks of life singing against the man with them. The thing is, I believed his future was bright, I saw logically how the music helped him get there, I just didn’t feel it in my heart. Maybe if we saw him struggling a bit on his own but still holding on to that newfound strength and hope, the family reunion and his speech from the stage would feel more resonant.
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What about seeing the actual conference he went to in New Jersey? See him on a college campus, see new people react to his writing and confirm that he has a special talent? So it would make that bright future real, and we could see him get some of that joyous feeling from his academic future that he gets in the songs?
On Wed, Aug 21, 2019 at 10:52 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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