The creation of Bruce Springsteen‘s 1982 album Nebraska—a bleak and raw departure from the pop rock which he was known for at the time—is the primary focal point of Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, the latest film from the inconsistent director with one or two minor hits. However, the film is also very clearly interested in studying Bruce Springsteen (played by the rising star Jeremy Allen White) as a character, bringing attention to, in particular, the isolation and loneliness he feels as a working class man suddenly separated from most of the people he knows by fame, while also feeling out of place in his new surroundings as a celebrity close to worldwide stardom.
It only takes the film a moment to capture the solitude which Springsteen enjoys—‘I’m afraid of cities’ he says—and it is not long after that the audience gets their first suggestion of Springsteen’s depression awakening as he sits in his large empty rental house, alone and bored, his mind frequently idling its way back to childhood memories which are far from happy due to his domineering, alcoholic father (played very well by Stephen Graham).
This idling soon leads Springsteen to mindlessly channel-hop on his television, where he happens to stumble upon Terrence Malick’s 1970s film Badlands. The film serves as a catalyst for Springsteen, leading him down a road where he studies the Nebraska of times past, finding a number of dark and disturbing inspirations as he starts to create his most daring album in equally unique circumstances.
Meanwhile, the film captures Springsteen‘s mental anguish through two of his key relationships throughout the film. The first is with his manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) which is surprisingly intimate and genuine (a rarity in a music biopic, which tend to frame anybody related to record labels as money hungry villains) and the other is through his relationship with a young woman, Faye (Odessa Young), with whom Springsteen attempts to begin a relationship while simultaneously being aware that, if forced, he would choose his art over Faye ten times out of ten.
Springsteen consistently detaches himself from people in order to avoid potentially hurting them, terrified of potentially repeating the same kind of treatment that he saw his mother experience at the hands of his father, and the loneliness that comes with this is only emphasised further by being surrounded by noise while on tour and then plunging back into eerie silence afterwards. Scott Cooper’s script captures this side of Springsteen reasonably well —as do the film’s four primary performances—with some very emotional moments, particularly in the third act as Springsteen becomes more active in facing the elements of his past which continue to haunt him.
However, the film also falls into some of the wider trappings of the modern music biopic, failing to truly focus on Springsteen as a character rather than as an image or an icon of modern popular culture. Jeremy Allen White’s performance is thankfully not as barebones as Rami Malek’s limp mimicry of Freddie Mercury as seen in Bohemian Rhapsody, but he simply isn’t given enough to do by the script. Scott Cooper’s direction is bland and lacks creativity, something which has been true of the director time and time again.
Largely made compelling by its central performances and the simple act of witnessing the creation of a great album like Nebraska, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is slightly better than the majority of recent music biopics because it does at least feel more interested in the psychology of its celebrity focal point, but it still struggles to truly prioritise Springsteen over the traditional check-boxes of the contemporary music biopic. It isn’t a bad film, but it is certainly lacking creative spark and the kind of emotional detail which would ensure the film some staying power.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’s Blu-ray and 4K release does also include a compelling four part documentary about the making of the film, which brings particular focus to the act of adapting Warren Zanes’ book on Springsteen to screen as well as the power of Nebraska as an album and Jeremy Allen White’s performance of Springsteen, a nice little addition for those who enjoyed the film with some interesting insight into the process of making it.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is now available on Blu-ray and 4K UHD from 20th Century Studios.
