Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere: A Messy Sad Core Biopic

Though a mixed bag of a genre, music biopics saw a resurgence, following the success of last year’s A Complete Unknown, a biopic centered around Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylan. Looking to continue that success is Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, a film this time centered around the titular rock legend. Based on the book ‘Deliver Me from Nowhere’ by Warren Zanes, it sees Jeremy Allen White step into the shoes of ‘The Boss,’ as the film focuses on a specific moment of Springsteen’s life, the making of what would become his 1982 hit album ‘Nebraska.’ For better or worse, messy execution would ultimately lead to a muddled narrative that fails to offer much in the way of substance as it connects the pieces. Films about tortured artists using their pain as a creative outlet are a dime a dozen, therefore more nuance is required for one to stand out. In the case of this film, some of that nuance is arguably lost in favor of crafting a fuller story, however, that fuller story doesn’t work without said nuance, if only to better understand Springsteen in that moment. That being said, fans will find themselves in a better position here but for anyone else, they will find themselves in the same position as where they started.

Taking place during the narrow period from late 1981 to 1982, Deliver Us from Nowhere follows a then 31-year-old Springsteen (White) coming off a successful tour for his latest album, 1980’s ‘The River.’ The response from the studio, naturally, is to get him back in to record more music. However, he was not exactly in the mood to crank out some more hits. Feeling worn out and homesick, all he wanted to do was to retreat to the familiarity of home and that’s what he did. In what was the darkest period of Bruce’s life, dealing with the ghosts of his past and signs of undiagnosed depression that he wasn’t quite ready to address, he took inspiration from the darker aspects of humanity. A departure from his usual fare, this new direction proved a to be a tough act to sell but Bruce’s belief in his new music and his adamance of getting the sound just right would also prove difficult for his band and the rest of his inner circle, including manager, mentor, and confidant, Jon Landau (Strong). Nevertheless, Landau held the line on the business side while Bruce found his was on the creative side.

A slow film overall, Bruce’s creative process, as he tried to find his way through his various issues and find inspiration for his new music, was especially slow. Over the course of the film, that process intersected with his past through a series of black-and-white flashback scenes, highlighting his complicated relationship with his father Douglas (Stephen Graham). Trying to connect a line from one to the other, the lack of nuance fails to drive that dynamic home while the way it goes about relating those experiences to his songwriting process borders on laughably contrived. In his hideaway of Colts Neck, a town near his hometown of Freehold, New Jersey, when he wasn’t working away at new material, he spent his time playing guitar for a garage band at a local nightclub. Still relatively anonymous, at the infancy of fame, for Bruce, that status began to change. In the middle of Bruce’s time away, he met Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a young single mother for whom he would develop feelings. From there, the film inserts a romantic subplot that creates an unnecessary detour with Faye (a fictional character), and the back and forth between her and Bruce, only serving as a plot device to pull audiences into Bruce’s inner conflicts and resulting emotional unavailability. The problem with that is that there isn’t much there to begin with.

To that degree, Deliver Us from Nowhere delivers audiences from nowhere to nothing as its run of thin vulnerability continues all the way to the end. Remaining emotionally elusive and lost, as ‘Nebraska’ was in its final stages, the film leaves its resolution for a few paragraphs of text that do more heavy lifting than the near 2-hours that preceded it. Shot well enough, the biggest question for many will surely relate to White and his performance as Bruce Springsteen. While not his fault, he may not look the part, but he does a better job at sounding the part. The slower, more contemplative nature of the film exposes his speaking voice which is not enough of a departure from White’s normal speaking voice, but he fares better at singing like Springsteen. Performing many of his greatest hits and working through some of his later works, he was fun to watch. However, it’s just a shame that the film pushes that side of Bruce away too much, in favor of a more tortured Bruce, though one grounded by very little.

Delivering a largely wooden performance, White struggles when required to go deeper emotionally with Bruce. Moody, for the most part, either he couldn’t get there or there wasn’t any there to get to. Developing him through the actions of the characters around him and/or the exposition they delivered, Strong, Young, and Hauser among others, primarily exist to remind audiences how tortured Springsteen is, or as Strong’s Landau called it, “going through some darkness.” Given next to nothing, in relation to the actors around him, it almost seems like the other performances are merely overcompensating for that. Saddled with perhaps the meatiest role, Graham does his best to make the most of what he is given as Douglas Springsteen, but he is still a tropey character used as another plot device in its messy attempt to round out Bruce.

At the end of the day, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere does exactly that, delivering a music biopic that fails to paint a compelling picture by not paying enough attention to its titular subject.

still courtesy of 20th Century Studios

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.