Jeremy Allen White stars in 'Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere'
"The Bear" star Jeremy Allen White explores the creation of Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" album in biopic "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere."
There’s an electric moment in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” while recording “Born in the U.S.A.” where the E Street Band is cooking, the Boss is wailing and you know something special is afoot. It’s also a scene unlike much of the Bruce Springsteen biopic.
Whether that’s a good thing or not might depend on your level of Springsteen fandom. Director Scott Cooper’s musical drama (★★★ out of four; rated PG-13; in theaters Oct. 24) centers on the making of the American icon’s 1982 “Nebraska” album, an introspective, albeit downbeat affair compared to his popular anthems like "Glory Days" and “Born to Run.” Jeremy Allen White gamely channels Springsteen in front of a live crowd, though those scenes are few and far between in “Nowhere” – this movie is way more interested in understanding the singer’s troubled inner life than his working-class rock swagger.
In 1981, fresh off an exhausting yet successful tour and on the cusp of superstardom, Bruce rents a house near his New Jersey hometown to get away from everything. However, it’s impossible to escape from himself. “Hungry Heart” is playing on the radio (which our hero quickly turns off) and when he goes to buy a new car, the salesman tells him he knows who Springsteen is. “That makes one of us,” Bruce quips.
His loyal manager and friend Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) is there to tune out the “noise,” like impatient record label executives wanting to strike with another album of hit singles while they’ve got momentum. Bruce, however, has other plans. He’s haunted by unresolved childhood trauma from being around an alcoholic, abusive dad (Stephen Graham), and Bruce pours those emotions – plus inspiration from Flannery O’Connor stories and a violent true-crime tale – into a series of acoustic tunes he lays down on a four-track cassette recorder in his bedroom.
The battle to release “Nebraska” his way, and how Bruce turns his struggles with depression into a seminal work of art, is both entertaining and revealing. In that way, “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is better than most biopics that don’t have the good sense to focus on a singular period in a musician’s life. (Staring at you, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”) Yet it also fails to take a lesson from superior fare, like the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown”: Don’t muddy up the story if you don’t have to.
One superfluous subplot involves Bruce’s romance with single mom Faye (Odessa Young), a relationship that starts well but goes south with the singer ghosting her as he gets more and more focused on his creative pursuits. Young is fine in the role but Faye is a composite character of women he dated at the time. The Boss being an iffy boyfriend doesn’t really help the movie’s thematic depth significantly, and she exists seemingly solely so Bruce can take out his frustrations on the upholstery of his snazzy new Camaro. Meanwhile Bruce’s mom (Gaby Hoffmann), whom the kid is fiercely protective of, is left annoyingly unexplored.
Cooper casts a couple of acclaimed, Emmy-winning Jeremys to fuel the movie’s core relationship. White, who usually excels amid the chaos of “The Bear,” finds a quieter fury in the stillness of Bruce’s isolation here, plus gets to show his musical side in the acoustic scenes. And Strong is superb as the low-key Landau, be it in the middle of an intense recording session or the touching closeness of Jon and Bruce’s bromance. There's not much the Academy loves more than actors playing musicians, so White is a strong contender for a best actor Oscar nod. Don't be surprised to see Strong get some serious supporting actor consideration, too.
The live performances are exciting even if fleeting, and the strong commitment to stripping the myth of Springsteen away to see the soul underneath covers up the film's storytelling misfires. “Deliver Me From Nowhere” is the solid portrait of an artist working through some stuff, and a man learning the power of being the Boss.
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