“Where you come from is gone. Where you thought you were going was never there.” Flannery O’Connor
Writer/director Scott Coopeer’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere has Flannery’s dark but open celebration of life, where Bruce (Jeremy Allen White) has been—from an unsettling place with his erratic father and loving mother to Bruce’s own struggles with depression. Therefore, this is an introspective take, not the bombastic but splashy Bohemian Rhapsody.
Although this bio is small by most standards of musical stories and covers only a few of his years, it gets to places in the artist’s psyche only a few have ever gone. It obviates my concern that the big bios are about melodies and groupies, not the inspiring creative process of the musician. In a sense, Bob Dylan’s story in A Complete Unknown (2024) came close to the interior look that Springsteen’s story does.
While we witness the conflicts of birthing Nebraska and its inherent darkness, Cooper and co-writer Warren Zanes (the story is adapted from his Springsteen bio) gently and slowly hint at the life-changing song Born in the USA. They well document the Boss’s struggle between promoting albums and benefiting from the hit single return, violating his prime directive to present the whole story in an album.
This biopic chooses to accompany Bruce while he emerges as a rock ‘n roll legend devoted to the common man’s celebration of life’s smaller moments that eventually lead to where he is going.
As much as I like this minimalist approach, I still yearn for more stage singing at which White is so adept—he should be nominated-- as Chalamet was last year. I could do less of Bruce’s romance with Faye (Odessa Young)—if it’s even real—and more of the sterling interaction with his friend/counsel Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong).
In this fine bio, Bruce best expresses the interiority of the film’s perspective:
“I just want it to feel like I’m in the room by myself.” Bruce
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Director: Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart)
Screenplay: Cooper from Warren Zanes Book
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, (The Iron Claw), Jeremy Strong (The Big Short)
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2h
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts NPR’s It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics as well as podcasts Back Talk and Double Take (recently listed by Feedspot as two of the ten best NPR Movie Podcasts) out of WCBE 90.5 FM, Columbus, Ohio.Contact him at JohnDeSando52@gmail.com