Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
by George Wolf
My sister-in-law Ellen still tells the story of when she bought Bruce Springsteen’s new album Nebraska in 1982. She was a college student, and was ready to rock out in her dorm room with the guy who was coming off the top ten singalong smash “Hungry Heart.”
What she got was a collection of stark, acoustic songs about murder, desperation and dead dogs. Not much to dance to.
Why would a rock star on the verge of global superstardom make such an unexpected move?
Writer/director Scott Cooper explores that question with Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, a heartfelt and emotional story of a man caught between the echoes of his past and the promise of his future.
Jeremy Allan White is sensational as Bruce. The look is right, and White’s playing and singing often get eerily close to the real thing. But even more than that, White captures the tortured soul of a rising phenom seemingly terrified of the success he knew was suddenly within his grasp.
Adapting Warren Zanes’s 2023 book, Cooper revisits some themes from his Oscar-winning Crazy Heart and makes the film a collection of small moments that capture a pivotal snapshot in the life of a living legend.
And none of it pushes too hard. Glimpses of a Flannery O’Connor book, the movies Badlands and Night of the Hunter, and the Suicide song “Frankie Teardrop” quietly tell us much about Bruce’s inspirations for the album. Black and white flashbacks to Bruce’s childhood with a troubled father (Stephen Graham) and a protective mother (Gaby Hoffmann) take a similarly understated approach, effectively layered as the lingering memories they were.
Bruce’s relationship with fictional girlfriend Faye (Odessa Young) begins as an awkward choice amid all this attention to detail, but the device ultimately gives us some insight into his fear of any happiness he felt was undeserved.
Lighter moments do come, almost always with the reactions to Bruce’s new direction. Manager Jon Landau (yet another terrific supporting turn from Jeremy Strong) gently tries to steer him toward the songs that would become Born in the U.S.A., while a record exec (David Krumholtz) throws up his hands in exasperation. And through it all, everyone (including Marc Maron as longtime engineer Chuck Plotkin) keeps wondering where the case is for Bruce’s cassette of homemade demos.
Bruce fans know well that those demos became the album, one now regarded as a seminal statement of untold influence. Those longtime followers will appreciate Cooper’s respectful approach that doesn’t feel the need to explain who people like Jon Landau are and where they fit in.
Because even for people who haven’t listened since 1982, Deliver Me From Nowhere presents a richly satisfying story of inspiration, artistic passion, and finding an inner peace that has long eluded you.
And yes, there’s a bit of “Born to Run” in here, too.
