Newly released, ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ focuses on a crucial time in the life of the iconic New Jersey rockstar, Bruce Springsteen.
Based on the acclaimed 2023 book by Warren Zanes, the director Scott Cooper takes the audience back to the early 1980s.
Springsteen (played by Jeremy Allen White) and his E Street Band have just finished ‘The River’ tour, and his record label expects that the next album will mark his entrance into the music world’s top tier.
Though on the cusp of an enormous professional ascent, Bruce is in the depths of despair. Unresolved childhood trauma, an inability to connect emotionally and a discomfort with the transition from his working-class past to his affluent present are holding him back.
Rather than being drawn onto the industry’s centre stage, Springsteen instead retreats into the solitude of his bedroom.
There, using nonconventional means, he channels his angst into recording soulful, bleak and at times disturbing songs for what would become the ‘Nebraska’ album.
Along the way, a struggling Springsteen receives tender support from his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) and tries to develop a better relationship with his troubled father (Stephen Graham).
Casual Springsteen fans may be surprised by the subject material. ‘Nebraska’ is clearly not to everyone’s taste. The title song narrates the story of Charles Starkweather: whose homicidal rampage across the plains claimed 11 victims.
Many people go to Springsteen concerts for the joyful, energetic songs which he is famous for.
Nebraska’ offers nothing like this. Instead, the album’s dark mood matched that of the singer at a time when his mental health difficulties led him to seek counselling.
When he emerged from the worst of it, he was in a position to record the legendary ‘Born in the USA’ album.
Indeed, the bitter lamentation within that album’s title song – the story of the Vietnam veteran, permanently estranged from the America he fought for – owes more to the spirit of ‘Nebraska.’ The recent release of the electric Nebraska version of ‘Born in the USA’ strips away any semblance of patriotism and allows the lyrics to speak for themselves.
Jeremy Allen White’s background in portraying dysfunctional characters makes him an excellent fit for this role. He is convincing on stage, and even more so off of it, when the emotional slumps after rousing performances hit the protagonist hard.
The darkness of the ‘Nebraska’ album’s songs – described in Springsteen’s autobiography as “black bedtime stories” – and his childhood experiences are made obvious, but perhaps too obvious.
Bruce Springsteen’s close involvement in the film is a clear limitation. We never get any thorough insight into exactly why he was so damaged emotionally, and this is probably deliberate.
His father was underemployed, uncommunicative and too fond of alcohol, but possibly not much more than many other fathers in 1950s America.
Stephen Graham (of ‘The Irishman,’ ‘Boiling Point’ and ‘Adolescence’) is one of the best actors in the business, but the script gives him little to work with.
Conversely, in portraying Springsteen’s manager, Jeremy Strong goes beyond his natural intensity and becomes reverential. Strong almost acts as a narrator in describing to those around him why Bruce is shunning the limelight and writing songs which cannot be played on the radio.
This is not uncharacteristic. Bruce Springsteen is not in a band, he has a band, and its members address him as ‘Boss.’
This film would have been better had a less sanitised version of the front man been presented, as it is in the book version of ‘Deliver Me From Nowhere.’
A case-in-point is the portrayal of Bruce’s relationship with the composite girlfriend Faye (Odessa Young). In the film, Bruce advises her upfront that she cannot expect a serious relationship. They enjoy some good times together, but in his depressed state, he cannot commit.
Springsteen’s actual girlfriend in that era told a different story in the Zanes book, stating that Springsteen’s attitude to her during their relationship was: ‘When I want to see you, you need to be here, and when I don’t, you need to be gone.’’
Perception matters much too much to Bruce Springsteen to allow an accurate representation of him to appear on-screen. All the characters in this movie are bit part players, none of whom are allowed to distract from the presence of the star.
For this and other reasons, ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ falls far short of the best music biopics like ‘Walk the Line’ or ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’
Yet there is a real genius here nonetheless.
‘Nebraska’ was a masterpiece, regarded by Springsteen himself as possibly his greatest album. Instead of soothing or entertaining, it challenges the listener; when Jon Landau first listened to the tape recordings, his primary concern was for the well-being of his friend.
This is a movie all about alienation, focused on an album all about alienation.
The story of Starkweather and his massacre came to Springsteen’s attention when he watched the Terrence Malick movie ‘Badlands,’ which was based on the notorious Fifties killing spree.
Springsteen has written and performed incredible songs about the distance between people, the things that we cannot have and the times we cannot get back.
When he saw ‘Badlands’ and read about what had happened, he was confronted with the most frightening form of isolation which exists: that of the nihilist who lashes out against the entire world.
A key moment in this film comes when Bruce rewrites the lyrics of ‘Nebraska,’ removing the third-person pronouns referring to Starkweather and making himself the voice of the condemned murderer:
“They declared me unfit to live said into that great void my soul’d be hurled
They wanted to know why I did what I did
Well sir I guess there’s just a meanness in this world”
The other songs which came out of this depressive chapter are hardly more uplifting. ‘Johnny 99’ is also about a violent rampage. ‘Atlantic City’ is a love song, but one where the lover sees no alternative to embarking upon a life of crime.
By directing his darkest feelings into the ‘Nebraska’ album, Bruce Springsteen did not just record an album for the ages. He replenished his supplies of artistic genius, and recovered the furious energy that continues to fuel his incredible live shows to this day.
A point stated in the Zanes book and made implicitly here is that without ‘Nebraska,’ ‘Born in the USA’ would never have come into being, and Springsteen would not have become the superstar he still is.
Despite its flaws, this film imparts a lesson about the value that comes out of suffering.