Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere has a lot in common with A Complete Unknown. Both music biopics that, rather than attempt a holistic picture of an artists’ life, hone in on a very particular period that speaks to the artist’s personality, creativity, and significance. A key difference though is that A Complete Unknown keeps Bob Dylan’s personal biography at an arm’s length where Deliver Me from Nowhere embraces it -in fact it makes it central to the movie’s story. This is in keeping with very broad music biopic tropes, especially down to the flashbacks to childhood filtered through a melancholy black-and-white lens. And even as the movie doesn’t cover the whole career of Bruce Springsteen, it does present the kind of close-ended story that the worst of this genre is known for. And yet there is something it taps at that is engaging about Bruce, much as I don’t entirely think director Scott Cooper understands his subject as well as he would like to.
Jeremy Allen White stars as Springsteen in 1981 after a string of major successes that finds him retreating to rural New Jersey to reconnect with his roots while prepping a demo in isolation for the album that would eventually be Nebraska -much to the chagrin of his record label. As he uses old recording equipment to achieve a specific sound, he thinks back on his troubled and complicated relationship with his father (Stephen Graham) and finds time to pursue a romantic relationship with Faye (Odessa Young), the sister of an old high school friend.
What was for a time roundly mocked but is in actuality one of the film’s few great assets is White’s performance of Springsteen. He doesn’t look the part or even particularly sound like the Boss, but he embodies very well the image of Springsteen, the heartland rocker desperate to remain down-to-earth however high his celebrity rises, cool and charming but a little dispassionate where matters don’t concern his music. And of course that leather jacket adds a lot. Cooper keeps the story fairly locked in on Bruce, and as his first real mainstream starring vehicle, White proves his adaptability and capacity to carry the film. There isn’t as much of him singing as one might expect but he does sing the songs himself and sounds pretty good, while imitating to a good degree Springsteen’s particular performance style of dramatic belting into the microphone while giving his body over wholesale to the music. I actually found myself wishing there was a little more of it in the movie to be honest.
Cooper tries his best to make the drama of Springsteen's life and personal issues interesting -casting the backstory involving his father in scenes of black and white and tying it into aspects of his artistry. But it is also just a little shallow. Bruce's father was an abusive drunk who occasionally respected Bruce or imparted a lesson that he internalized, but otherwise there isn't a lot to dissect. Bruce's therapy is his music and we get a pretty decent sense of it in one place -the writing of "Nebraska". And this sequence is also a nice illustration of his inspiration -the spark first lit by watching Terence Malick's Badlands, then looking up some of the real history behind the Starkweather homicides, fudging the location a bit for the story of his song, and then outright realizing he is writing his own story and changing the pronouns accordingly. In a genre that tends to take a lazier approach to how famous songs come to be, it is refreshingly detailed... yet still somewhat nebulous around Bruce's actual feelings.
But we are meant to really connect with his trauma. It is the backbone of not only the album but the man himself at this time -as the movie would have you believe. It is behind the crashing of his relationship with Faye -warm and endearing for a time, especially with regards to his wholesomeness towards her daughter- and of course the stubbornness he has towards the album’s production, frustrated by the inability to replicate in studio the sound he created alone. There is something interesting nudged at here in the aesthetic value of imperfection, much of what Springsteen strives for sounds “bad” by usual industry standards. But in Springsteen being unable to articulate this well, the passion comes off a little impotent, and especially given that his crew led by Jeremy Strong as manager Jon Landau, are highly reticent to push back at all -and certainly wouldn’t dare question The Boss creatively. It’s here that the hand of Springsteen himself feels a little more present on the film. His friends all support him in spite of subdued frustrations, and the only critics are those record executives (represented by David Krumholtz) who are about to be proven very wrong. The scene where Landau confirms Springsteen will neither promote the record nor appear on the cover (and further the one song that went right in studio, “Born in the U.S.A” -an obvious hit- will be delayed until the next album) to the disbelieving gall of this figure is played with such smug self-satisfaction it demands you appreciate the genius of such a move.
The more humane, tender side of Springsteen doesn’t come out in his creative or traumatic anguish, but the charm with which he romances Faye. She and her daughter -the family unit they symbolize- represents quite aptly for him that ordinary grounded life he would like to get to, but that his fame on some level prohibits him from. Though he of course does plenty to sabotage his own happiness here as well. And I appreciate that the movie actually avoids the standard sweet resolution to this story (though I assume Springsteen fans would have known already). Even in its more romantic swells (such as a love moment on a carousel), this part of the narrative is more tangible, Springsteen’s demons a little more direct, his tragedy more immediate.
Of course the unconventionality here is paired with a very conventional closure of optimism that reminded me a lot of Rocketman -though without musical accompaniment. A scene of reunion with his father -with Graham under old age prosthetics- feels more than a little saccharine. In the journey towards that point, Cooper’s direction is very good, especially in how much he makes the movie look and feel like the 1980s without ever really acquiescing to stereotypical aesthetics. The movie breathes quite organically, and sure, that love for Springsteen flows out of the film even if it doesn’t exploit his music quite the way other biopics have. But it is not ultimately a strong film. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere makes some smart or interesting choices, and White carries a lot of it well on his back -yet the film is still a tidy hagiography, not revealing any new sides or perspectives on Springsteen and his music and playing to a number of weary beats. Bruce may have been delivered from nowhere ultimately, but the audience is often taken there by this film.
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