‘Those songs are the only thing making sense to me right now…’
I adore Bruce Springsteen and he’s been a big part of my life since I was a kid. He was one of the first musicians my dad and I bonded over; his music has soundtracked every stage of my life, and I had the privilege of seeing the Boss live in Dublin back in 2023. And yet, it has taken me almost a year to sit through Scott Cooper’s biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. This is partly because of the fairly lukewarm reviews, and partly because I’m still not convinced that biopics based on musicians have any value. Now that I’ve seen it, I’m still not sure…
The story of Bruce Springsteen is a tough nut to crack for any filmmaker because it is at once broadly cinematic but also well-worn. Springsteen is the Rocky Balboa of the music world. The ultimate underdog. How to portray this on screen in a way that avoids clichés? The answer, of course, is to tell a different story. And so, Deliver Me from Nowhere touches on Springsteen’s childhood, specifically his troubled relationship with his father (portrayed here by Stephen Graham), but the main focus of the film is the creation of Nebraska – Springsteen’s near-mythical sixth studio album. Jeremy Allen White convinces as The Boss, but Jeremy Strong delivers a rare stinker as his long-time manager, Jon Landau. Odessa Young rounds out the cast as Bruce’s fictional love interest, Faye Romano.
There’s a lot to like about Deliver Me from Nowhere. White does a fine job in replicating Springsteen’s vocal style, for example, but Cooper, working from his own screenplay, tries to pack too much in here. We have Springsteen’s self-doubt (although it’s never really explained why he should feel this way), his relationship with his father and his manager, the fictional relationship with a potential lover, wranglings with the record label, problems finding the right sound for Nebraska… It’s just too much. The decision to include a fictional love interest at all is baffling when there is so much real-life material to draw from.
As a Springsteen fanatic, it’s hard for me to divorce my passion for the man’s music and what it means to me from this film – a film that has moments of greatness but never threatens to actually be great. Would someone with only a passing interest in New Jersey’s finest find more to enjoy here than I did? Maybe. Maybe not. All I know is, the best way to experience the album Nebraska is to listen to the album Nebraska. No amount of movie magic can replicate that.
