Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
(12A, 120 mins)
Verdict: Bold, intense biopic
My top 10 music biopics would have to feature Walk The Line, the 2005 film about Johnny Cash, and I’d find room too for Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980, Loretta Lynn), Nowhere Boy (2009, John Lennon) and A Complete Unknown, last year’s riveting account of four eventful years in the life of Bob Dylan.
So how highly does Scott Cooper’s film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere climb in the biopic hit parade?
It’s not a Top 10 contender, not quite Top 20 either; but rather like Cooper’s debut feature, Crazy Heart (2009), about a washed-up country music star played by Jeff Bridges, it’s crafted with passion and conviction.
Jeremy Allen White makes a plausibly tormented Bruce Springsteen, on the cusp both of super-stardom and mental disintegration.
You may have seen White playing a psychologically brittle chef in The Bear, the TV drama that whisked him to fame.
His Springsteen is a similar character: a whizz with a guitar rather than a grill, but comparably troubled and introspective. White has gone from the frying pan into I’m On Fire.
So how highly does Scott Cooper’s film Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere climb in the biopic hit parade?
It’s not a Top 10 contender, not quite Top 20 either; but rather like Cooper’s debut feature, Crazy Heart (2009), about a washed-up country music star played by Jeff Bridges, it’s crafted with passion and conviction
As with Carmy in The Bear, family issues account for most of Bruce’s demons, in particular his relationship with his brutish, alcoholic dad Doug (Stephen Graham, deftly replacing his Liverpool vowels with those of blue-collar New Jersey).
Fleeting flashbacks to Bruce’s childhood with an abused mother, Adele (Gaby Hoffmann), and a bullying father, are shot in monochrome.
Later, in colour, we see the grown-up, successful Bruce stopping outside his run-down former home, uneasily trying to connect his past with his present.
When he goes to buy a car, a salesman tells him ‘I do know who you are.’ ‘Well,’ says Bruce, ‘that makes one of us.’
The story unfolds mainly in 1981, in the wake of the thunderously triumphant tour to promote his hit album The River.
We see him belting out rock anthems before adoring crowds, and excited executives at Columbia Records are eager for another album in the same vein.
But Bruce, the New York Yankees fan, does not play ball.
Absorbed by the story of teenage serial killer Charles Starkweather, he decides to make a solo album, without his energetic E Street Band, of plaintive songs about loss and failure.
Jeremy Allen White makes a plausibly tormented Bruce Springsteen, on the cusp both of super-stardom and mental disintegration
His Springsteen is a similar character: a whizz with a guitar rather than a grill, but comparably troubled and introspective. White has gone from the frying pan into I’m On Fire
Moreover, he records them in his bedroom, on primitive equipment, eventually handing over an audio-cassette without so much as a case.
He calls the album Nebraska, after Starkweather’s home state.
The film chronicles the efforts of those around him, his sound engineers and above all his loving, endlessly supportive manager Jon Landau (charmingly played by Jeremy Strong), to accommodate his angst-ridden single-mindedness.
A burgeoning relationship with a pretty young single mother, Faye (Odessa Young, also excellent), shows what a decent and humble man he is at heart.
Almost inevitably, Faye waits tables in a neighbourhood diner. She is perfect for him. But ultimately, his emotional and creative turmoil leave no room for her.
Faye, by all accounts, is a composite of several women Springsteen dated around that time. All the other main characters in Deliver Me From Nowhere are real, and the film is based on the 2023 non-fiction book of the same title, by Warren Zanes.
This is an intense and commendably bold film, an atypical music biopic for sure, but comfortably in my personal top 40
It isn’t what you’d call a fun watch, unlike A Complete Unknown, which also focused on a controversial artistic choice (Dylan’s decision to go electric).
Furthermore, a singer-songwriter pal of mine, a huge Springsteen fan, assures me that White, while terrific at being the Boss off-stage, isn’t nearly as good on, singing well enough yet lacking the comportment and charisma.
But actually, that doesn’t really matter.
This is an intense and commendably bold film, an atypical music biopic for sure, but comfortably in my personal top 40.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in cinemas from Friday, October 24
