We Believe in Bruce Springsteen

Eschewing the conventional rock biopic format — in which a significant portion of a performer’s life is covered in flashback, usually from the moment of a pivotal career milestone (see Walk the Line or, for a less serious take, Walk Hard) — Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere defies expectation.

It zeroes in on a specific year, starting in 1981 on the final night of Bruce Springsteen’s The River tour, during which he achieved his greatest success to date. Not surprisingly, his record label wanted to strike while the iron was hot, but 32-year-old Bruce (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) was uncomfortable with all that fame and still grappling with some heavy, unresolved issues involving his father. So, he decided to retreat to a house in Colts Neck, N.J., to chill out for a bit. As he tells his longtime friend and manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, Succession) early on here, “I just need to get home and slow things down a little.”

Inspired by the film Badlands and the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, Springsteen would spend the next few months writing dark, deeply personal songs about haunted men (“Nebraska,” “Atlantic City,” and “My Father’s House,” among them) — not exactly the kind of stuff his label was hoping for. He laid down most of the tracks in a studio with the E Street Band (heard here only musically, with not a line of dialogue for Stevie, Clarence, Max, et al), but ultimately, Bruce decided to shelve those electric versions and insisted on releasing the stark, minimalist demos he initially recorded on a four-track cassette recorder in his bedroom in Colts Neck. He called the album Nebraska.

Of course, all that is probably well known to even the most casual of Springsteen fans. And of course, today, Nebraska is viewed as a classic, one of Bruce’s best albums. But at the time, Bruce was not “The Boss” he is today, so he didn’t have the clout or cachet he does now. Thankfully, Cooper’s film doesn’t wink at the audience, as if to overplay the stakes, since we all know how well it all worked out. Rather, Deliver Me from Nowhere shows that all of this was a huge risk that gave everyone involved a significant amount of agita, to put it mildly.

The album’s backstory was well told in Warren Zane’s book of the same name, on which the film is based (with some anecdotes from Bruce’s memoir, Born to Run, peppered in), and Cooper doesn’t shy away from portraying Bruce’s depression or his stubborn, albeit legendary, perfectionism. That said, the film’s focus is more on Bruce and his mental health issues than it is the making of an album.

Yes, despite what its opening scene might promise, Deliver Me from Nowhere is not the most uplifting of films. You won’t be running out of the theater singing “Born to Run” or “Dancing in the Dark.” Instead, it’s a captivating look at a man wrestling with some nagging personal demons, who managed to achieve new creative heights despite that struggle. You might call it Portrait of the Artist as a Depressed Young Man, to paraphrase the title of the James Joyce novel.

Okay, fine. There are flashbacks — beautifully photographed, black-and-white ones — that illustrate the lingering trauma of Bruce’s childhood and his difficult relationship with his father (Stephen Graham, Adolescence), an alcoholic with violent mood swings. These are contrasted effectively with “present-day” scenes showing the tight, trusting relationship Bruce had, and still has, with Landau. (It was Landau, after all, who famously declared in 1974 after seeing Bruce perform, “I saw rock’n’roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”) Strong is saddled with some heavy-handed and obvious lines of dialogue, but generally, his performance as a patient, supportive, and long-suffering creative partner is a solid one, right in the actor’s wheelhouse.

And yes, there’s also a girl: Faye (Odessa Young), a composite character inspired by multiple ex-girlfriends, whose relationship with Bruce here nicely illustrates his desire to connect with women but his inability at that time to follow through. (For the record, Patti Scialfa didn’t join the E Street Band until 1984, just before the Born in the U.S.A. tour began.)

So, fine. Liberties have obviously been taken in telling this story. But it’s worth noting that Bruce himself was heavily involved in the making of the film, hanging out on set often, and he’s actively involved in its promotion, so if these tweaks are fine with him, and he’s someone who likes to get everything just right — as the film dramatizes — then I suppose they’ve gotta be fine with us, too. (Apparently, Bruce is a fan of Cooper’s Crazy Heart, which earned Jeff Bridges the Oscar for Best Actor.)

Cooper certainly picked the right actor to star. White may not look like Bruce, but he digs deep, and his internalized performance rings true. Just as impressive: White’s singing voice is almost a clone of Bruce’s. He sings most of the songs himself, even the most recognizable ones, and if you’re unfamiliar with the minute details of Springsteen’s performances, you may even be unable to tell when it’s White’s voice we’re hearing and when it’s Springsteen’s. 

If you’re looking for a film that’s a barn burner like Bruce’s concerts are, that’s a celebration of the arena-rock classics of blue-collar New Jersey’s favorite son, you might want to hold out for the sequel. Rather, Deliver Me from Nowhere is a touching film about one of my favorite artists, and I appreciated its take on Bruce not in the context of the rock legend we know today but as the fragile young man he was, who, even then, could spin greatness out of his most difficult times.

It’s one of my favorite films of the year. 

I’m giving Deliver Me from Nowhere a B+.