That the Boss is apparently one of history’s great note-takers isn’t something I was expecting from a film about Bruce Springsteen. The overly expository dialogue and too-literal written memos that spell out everything that the iconic singer/songwriter is thinking and feeling are just another well-worn device of the music biopic, but it feels especially egregious in director Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, which revolves around the creation of Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska— an artistically daring and bracingly personal work, the songs all recorded unaccompanied on a four-track recorder in his bedroom in New Jersey.
There’s nothing artistically daring about Deliver Me from Nowhere, which, in its struggle to balance Springsteen’s personal struggles with an intricate portrayal of the creative process, is scattershot at best. Based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 book of the same name (and partially on Springsteen’s own memoir, Born to Run), the film opens on the final performance of Springsteen’s sold-out tour for his fifth studio album, The River. The intensity of his stage presence is evident from the jump. Played by a committed Jeremy Allen White, sweat drips from his hair and skin as he belts his hit “Born to Run” over the shouts of enthusiastic fans. His quiet dissatisfaction with the turn his life and career have taken, however, become evident in flashes; he irritatedly changes the channel when his song “Hungry Heart” comes on the radio in the car, and he insists on taking a rental home by the lake in the country in an effort to get away from it all. While aimlessly channel surfing one night, he happens across Terence Malick’s 1973 film Badlands on TV, and becomes immediately taken with the tale of the rebellious young man who embarks on a murder spree with his girlfriend (based on the real life killings of Charles Starkweather). The movie skews this as Springsteen’s primary impetus for creating Nebraska, although it drops some other Easter eggs in for eagle-eyed fans (there are a couple of references to the writings of Flannery O’Connor, for instance).
Unfortunately, whether it’s from Springsteen himself or those around him, like his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, whose understated performance finds its strength in his groundedness and loyalty to his client and friend), Deliver Me from Nowhere insists on telling us a lot of these things, rather than showing us. There’s a disconnectedness to the film as it jumps from thread to thread, never settling on one thing for long enough to allow the viewer to fully sit in its emotions, in addition to a script that never dives deeper than the surface. Springsteen begins a relationship with Faye (Odessa Young), single mom, waitress, and sister of an old classmate he meets after performing at the Stone Pony club one night, but there’s next to no transition between his doting on her to his all but abandoning her to work on his music. The latter half of the film seems to want to concentrate more on the creation of the album, but it skims over the full-band recording sessions that Springsteen ultimately deemed as failures. Black-and-white flashbacks occasionally illustrate his upbringing and tempestuous relationship with his father, an alcoholic who liked to fight, but who also took little Bruce to movies that would eventually inspire him. The present day scenes also include interludes in which Springsteen attempts to reconcile the father he knew as a child to the father he knows now (and his dad is quite movingly portrayed by Stephen Graham), but they feel awkwardly shoved into the film, along with the late-film turn toward portraying Springsteen’s struggle with depression.
For a rock star, Springsteen is famously unproblematic: he’s never done drugs, he publicly supports worthy causes, he’s been married to the same woman since 1991, and hasn’t become embroiled in any other sort of scandals or controversies. At times, it feels like Deliver Me from Nowhere is working a little too hard to stir up some drama where in reality there is none (the Faye storyline, for instance, concludes on an unsettlingly sour note). At other times, it feels like it’s being too respectful and restrained, holding back from landing some real emotional blows. There are some really lovely glances at the support system Springsteen has here, however. The humanity that courses through the scenes of him reconnecting with his father, or quietly bonding with Jon, are something to grab on to in a film that ultimately goes nowhere.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 120 minutes. Rated PG-13.
Katie at the Movies 