I have no idea if it's a good film mind you, because it just blows past good, straight past all my critical faculties.
It captures that teenage feeling of no-one understanding you except your band, in all its melodramatic glory. I mean it, that windswept scene, who hasn't felt precisely that?
Maybe that's why I love the film - the way it reflects so many of my experiences. Not just "my favourite band are the only people who understand me", but the town in economic distress ('Luton is a Four-Letter Word' indeed), the friend you shared your music with, Leicester being the escape from your rundown town, so much of it.
That's before we get to Roop looking so much like A who was my mate who shared his music with me. (No, seriously, that was uncanny, and means I get guilt for not keeping in better touch with A every time I think of the film.)
The whole thing is filled with so much love, from Javed on down. Everyone is trying to get tomorrow and helpd each other as best they can (except Eliza's parents and the National Front, and fuck the National Front).
The love is everywhere - find me a scene more filled with love than the one where Javed's Mum dyes Javed's Dad's hair.
It would have been so easy to make Javed's Dad the boo-hiss disapproving Dad of legend, but he's not. He disapproves, yes, and he doesn't understand, but he's trying so hard and it's clear throughout that he loves his son. Even if he's terrible at showing it.
The other thing I really like is that Javed is not over-idealised. As it's based on an autographical book, it must have been so tempting to make Javed super-sympathetic and always right, but he isn't. He gets to be mean, thoughtless and selfish at times. He's a teenager and feels like it. I also like that, unlike a lot of other Bildungsroman-type films, Javed grows through his own experiences and not the suffering of others.
In short, I loved it.
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