Director: Scott Cooper
Writer: Scott Cooper
Stars: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young
Synopsis: Bruce Springsteen, a young musician on the cusp of global superstardom, struggles to reconcile the pressures of success with the ghosts of his past.
For a rock star with ideas, morals, and politics as relatively straightforward as those beholden by Bruce Springsteen, his songs and lyrics never fail to be misrepresented by hordes of fans, especially young white men, always eager to pretend that the star is something he’s not. The New Jersey native – breaking news – has written dozens of songs related to and/or about his home state, and though most of them are socio-politically charged poems about disillusioned soldiers, nuclear power plant disasters, and organized crime, millions of pork roll/Taylor Ham-loving folk might as well be listening to different tracks as they don the red, white, and blue and wax poetic about how their homegrown boy is one hell of a Patriot. Just last week, hundreds of golf enthusiasts stormed Bethpage Black Golf Course to cheer on America’s top golfers as they battled Europe in the biennial Ryder Cup, doing so to the tune of “Born in the U.S.A.” blasting from someone’s speaker. Most people know that The Boss’ rock anthem is really about a Vietnam veteran whose economic hardships upon returning home find him questioning a country he no longer recognizes; many others, however, still believe it to be a celebration of nationalism, and apparently a proper rallying cry for Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau.
An understanding of that rudimentary fact would require Springsteen-ites to listen to the artist’s lyrics as opposed to just hearing the grunts and guitar strums that overshadow the depth “hidden” in many of his most profound tunes, many of which are found on his 1982 album “Nebraska.” It’s celebrated now – time heals all wounds, or “some,” if they were garnered in the line of duty – but the rocker’s sixth studio offering had its critics, including those involved in its making. Columbia Records executives may have been focused on sales and radio-ready hits, and they also feared a rejection of their next Great White Hope, a singer on the verge of superstardom who they believed would be throwing away the goodwill he’d accumulated on the heels of his three previous records, 1975’s Born to Run, 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, and 1980’s four-sided The River. At the time, Musician magazine called it “murderously monotonous;” The Washington Post said it “may be the most undynamic album of 1982.”
But the songs on Nebraska weren’t meant to replicate those that preceded it. Rather, they fueled a personal exorcism for Springsteen, a process that helped him reckon with his troubled childhood in Freehold, NJ and solemnly belt through a debilitating depression that rendered his love life moot and his already-distant connection to the world outside of his lakefront rental home. At least, that’s the story Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) chose to tell in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere – the 63rd New York Film Festival’s Spotlight Gala selection – which stars an ever-committed Jeremy Allen White as its titular man and details the “Nebraska” process in full, from its song’s modest recordings on a four-track cassette tape to its rickety rollout. “They didn’t understand it,” says the now-memed, devastating scene from Lady Bird, a sentiment that Bruce couldn’t get across enough during the production process of his most personal, intimate album, a cry for help disguised as a collection of memories ranging from an upbringing in the middle of nowhere New Jersey to a night where his channel surfing led to a revelatory viewing of Terrence Malick’s Badlands. If only the white-collared professionals with the most decision-making power in the room had taken the time to listen to the words rather than the music.
Even if they had, though, it stands to reason that the 10 tracks on Nebraska would have baffled anyone to have ever been within earshot of Springsteen’s hitmaking abilities, especially on the heels of The River’s hit single, “Hungry Heart.” From what we see in Deliver Me From Nowhere, Bruce’s longtime friend and manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) is the lone confidant who’s willing to hear him out. Al Teller (David Krumholtz) wants a follow-up to The River, and quickly, one that strikes the iron while it’s still hot and rakes in more dough than the previous albums and accompanying tours combined. In other words, he wants more of the same, and Springsteen isn’t willing to compromise despite the increasingly-compromised position he finds himself in. His psychological state is corroding; memories of his abusive father and tormented mother (Stephen Graham and Gaby Hoffman, initially introduced in flashback sequences shot in black and white, as only a biopic could) come flooding back as if the Jersey Shore has been engulfed by a tsunami, one that Bruce only imagines a few ditties can quell. And so he locks himself in his bedroom – with Paul Walter Hauser’s Mike Batlan, The Boss’ old assistant, at his side through the experiment in the interest of comic relief – to sing his feelings into oblivion, writing and recording songs about (and sometimes called) Atlantic City, a mansion out of a dream that his father used to take him to look at when he was little, and two brothers on different sides of the law.
Whether he’s running from the past, rejecting the present, or attempting to ease the pain he imagines lies in his future, the exercise is trying and at least rooted in truth, a lot like the film it anchors. Written and directed by Cooper, and thus colored by the filmmaker’s stable inclination to go melodramatic when he should have stayed grounded, Deliver Me From Nowhere isn’t a mangled (nor is it a Mangold) biopic, per se, but one that feels stuck in place as it trudges forward through the bad times its subject endures over the course the vital album’s process. Perhaps that’s due to its attempt to reduce its inspiration, a 352-page biography by Warren Zanes that was inspired by the brevity of the Nebraska chapter in Springsteen’s 2017 memoir, to a two-hour cinematic experience. (It quickly becomes clear why Bruce rejected proposals of films about his life for the better part of 30 years, and why he’s been so reluctant to talk about the Nebraska of it all.) Perhaps it’s more due to its awkward structural decisions, like jumping from a defining moment in Bruce’s youth (where his father stomps toward his bedroom with the force of Godzilla) to the triumphant closing night of his River tour, and the inclusion of a composite girlfriend (Odessa Young) in the film’s defining effort to have its genre cake and eat it, too.
Better yet, maybe it’s the fact that Young’s Faye summarizes the whole project in a matter of seconds: “This is about you running away from what scares you.” Over the course of Deliver Me From Nowhere, its protagonist rubbernecks his way through a lot, and bolts to conquer plenty more. Mending his relationship with the estranged dad who beat him and his mother is on the menu; so, too, are a shit ton of diner breakfasts, which Bruce enjoys from Colts Neck to Los Angeles, likely to varying levels of bowel discomfort. Insofar as Cooper’s picture is about self-discovery and the ongoing battle with demons, it mainly captures its hero as a man who was, indeed, born to run. From the terrifying prospect of global fame; from love; from discomfort. As he tells a car salesman who admits that he knows who his latest client is, Bruce cheesily (if authentically) replies, “That makes one of us.”
The only thing White’s Springsteen doesn’t run in the clear opposite direction of is his depression, and The Bear beau manages to inject the same fervor into his mental breakdowns as he does many of his musical performances. (His E-Street Band-accompanied runthrough of “Born in the U.S.A” will steal your breath.) It’s Cooper’s script, based in fact as it is, that seems determined to trip up the excellent performance it had a hand in inspiring with the movie-making of it all. To his credit, as he noted in a post-screening Q&A at the film’s second festival screening, the writer-director had no interest in making a conventional biopic about Bruce Springsteen; he wanted to make a film about a particularly weighty period in a legendary life chock-full of special moments, and in making his point, noted that were he to make a film about Elvis Presley, he’d want it to take place on the last day of The King’s life.
Elvis fans would probably be as furious about that approach as they were when Austin Butler wouldn’t stop talking like the guy well after filming had concluded, just as Springsteen fans who enter Deliver Me From Nowhere with the blind assumption that it will be the cinematic equivalent to one of the artist’s notoriously-lengthy concerts will leave wondering, “Wait, why didn’t he play ‘Dancing in the Dark’?” A cursory amount of research will help assuage those grievances, and the very fact that Bruce is finally receiving an on-screen memorialization (no matter its scope) will scratch whatever itch still plagues those fans, regardless of what their Spotify histories tell you about their listening habits. Whether or not Deliver Me From Nowhere addresses any other needs is a more curious gambit, akin to delving into Flannery O’Connor’s religious fascinations. The writer comes up twice in the film. In the first act, Springsteen fusses with an externally-weathered copy of her tome of short stories, but save for a single dog ear, the pages within are in pristine condition. Later on, Strong’s Landau quotes the author: “Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.”
Cooper theoretically tangles with those ideas, but the explicit nature of Landau’s wisdom drop is more befitting of Deliver Me From Nowhere than the film realizes. We started with Bruce’s humble, tortured beginnings as a young boy, and in a flash, those greyed-out images are ancillary; his megastar future was all but certain, but he mapped the journey on his own terms, not in the fashion that Columbia’s button-pushers expected; and where we are – watching Springsteen fiddle with his next steps – is a perfectly fine place to be, as long as what follows is a more pleasant existence than the current one. To a point, Deliver Me From Nowhere understands those ideas, but it’s more prone to sit with them than to explore them with the depth they deserve. Like the film, and the many people who confusedly stare at Bruce as he silently processes his emotions throughout, the answers to the questions asked are known if not vocalized. Perhaps the masses will have more courage to say them out loud in its place.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere screened as the Spotlight Gala selection at the 63rd New York Film Festival. 20th Century Studios will release it in theaters on Oct. 24.
