“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” Scratches the Surface
This is an inherently difficult review for me. For the most part, I like to write reviews in the third person as an objective film critic under the belief that there’s an audience for every film, and sometimes it’s not me. I will meet these movies where they are and critique them based on the way I think the intended audience will receive the film. At the very least, I try to explain what worked, or didn’t, from my perspective. I will argue, though, that Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is the type of film that was made for me and, in this case, I can’t help but be a little personal.
I discovered Bruce Springsteen through his Born to Run album sometime in high school. There are things you discover in life that just send a jolt of electricity through you. That make sense of the world in a way you couldn’t on your own. That was, and is, Bruce, for me. I’m the same age he was when his career-defining album, Nebraska, was released. This album came from a place of pain for Bruce. He had released a few albums by then, but only just broke into the mainstream with The River. Fame was difficult for Bruce, so he retreated to his home of Freehold, New Jersey. In the bedroom of a rental with a four-track recorder, Bruce Springsteen would write Nebraska.
20th Century Studios
If A Complete Unknown was about Bob Dylan going electric, Deliver Me from Nowhere is about Springsteen going acoustic. In the film, the Boss is played by Jeremy Allen White, who became known for portraying the sensitive, stressed-out chef on The Bear. Allen White captures Bruce’s loneliness, his internalization of the depression that is heavily weighing him down. Jeremy Strong plays longtime Springsteen confidant Jon Landau, and Odessa Young rounds out the rest of the main cast as Faye, a fictional character who’s an amalgamation of a few girlfriends Bruce had at the time. By narrowing the focus to the Nebraska years and limiting the main characters to Bruce, Jon, Faye, and Bruce’s parents in flashbacks (Stephen Graham & Gaby Hoffmann), Deliver Me from Nowhere evades many of the usual biopic troubles.
Deliver Me from Nowhere doesn’t work, and this is because my own history plays into my perception of the film, because it doesn’t go beneath the surface to show the weight of Springsteen’s depression. Biopics are often afraid to paint their subjects with even a minor negative brush. To its credit, Deliver Me from Nowhere’s fictional Bruce doesn’t come across as squeaky clean, but the issue lies with the real Bruce. He has never been one to shy away from talking about his anxiety and depression. You can hear it in his songs going all the way back to his first album. In his memoir, his Broadway show, and last year’s Road Diary, Bruce eloquently summed up his difficult relationship with his father, the way he struggled with mental health lows, and the way he mistreated women when he was younger. These are places Bruce is willing to go, so why is Deliver Me from Nowhere afraid to?
20th Century Studios
We’re presented with very basic rationale for why Bruce is feeling the way he is. In the flashbacks, his father is angry, his mother is sad, and there’s nothing a child can do to solve it. In the present day of the film, he’s on the verge of a fame he’s not even sure he wants. He’s as happy playing in front of a small crowd at the Stone Pony as he is at a sold-out arena. He sees a big mansion on a hill that his dad couldn’t afford, so he writes “Mansion on a Hill.” Deliver Me from Nowhere simplifies an album and a time in Bruce’s life to something easily digestible, but it’s not. The weight you feel in the original recording of “My Father’s House” is not something the listener can take lightly. On the album, it’s the second-to-last song, one of the most stripped-back of the tracks. In the film it’s a bit of an afterthought, with Bruce adding it at the last minute to the album, and only about thirty seconds being played. I’m not asking for every song to play out in its entirety, but if this film is based on the tense relationship between Bruce and his father, then shouldn’t “My Father’s House” be given space to breathe?
Maybe my desire for Deliver Me from Nowhere to delve deeper comes from the fact that I’ve seen what Bruce looks like beneath the sheen of his rockstar persona. I know what it’s like to feel helpless and to use a creative outlet to pull myself out of the depths. How much of a burden it feels to be alive sometimes, how difficult it is to ask for help, and the catharsis that comes from creation. I’m not claiming to have made something as monumental as Nebraska. I’m merely a fan who has used the album to get through some rough days. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere allows fans to begin to see Bruce for who he is, but not as openly as longtime listeners may want.
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