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Nowhere Man

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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.

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Unpacking Adjectives

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C’mon C’mon

by Hope Madden

In looking back over the notes I took as I screened Mike Mills’s latest feature, I find more single words than helpful phrases or insights. I wrote down these words: intimate, vulnerable, hopeful, sincere, earnest.

In other words, C’mon C’mon is a Mike Mills film.

The filmmaker’s most memorable movies dig deep into one connection within a family to see how that tumult ripples out to the rest of our hero’s relationships. Beginners pitted a man’s evolving bond with his aging father (Christopher Plummer, who took home an Oscar for the role). Six years later, Mills digs into mother/son issues with the incandescent 20th Century Women. (Mills nabbed his first Oscar nomination for the screenplay.)

In C’mon C’mon, a man’s changing relationship with his young nephew mirrors his deepening bond with his estranged sister. That man, Johnny, is played by Joaquin Phoenix, who presumably does not need to be described as one of the greatest actors working today because everyone knows that by now.

Phoenix is particularly endearing in this film, hitting those earlier adjectives with such authenticity it would be very easy to believe he simply loved the little boy he was spending all this time with, regardless of the amount of energy a 9-year-old sucks from you, not to mention the frustration that comes with that territory.

Jesse, the 9-year-old, is played by quite an amazing actor himself. Woody Norman (love that name!) shoulders the responsibility of being precocious, frustrating, brilliant, adorable, tender and human. He soars, and his chemistry with Phoenix couldn’t be more charming or genuine.

So many adjectives!

Gaby Hoffmann deserves one, too, because she’s wonderful as well as Norman’s mom, Johnny’s sister Viv. Viv needs to look in on Jesse’s father, a bipolar musician who’s bitten off more than he can chew with his new job, new apartment and new dog. Johnny agrees to look after Jesse, eventually bringing the boy along with him to New York and then New Orleans where Johnny interviews kids for a radio program.

Johnny is finding out how the world looks to a child and realizing that it is genuinely terrifying.

Both sound design and cinematography also need to be acclaimed as adjective worthy as well, because this film looks and sounds amazing.

Mills blends the interviews (of non-actors whose responses are not scripted) with the fictional relationships among Johnny, Jesse and Viv. The blending of reality with fiction is seamless enough to buoy the sense of authenticity and heighten a mood of empathy.

As is true with Beginners and 20th Century Women, C’mon C’mon wraps the messy, awkward, disappointing realities of being human in a blanket of hope. As cloying as that sounds, the film is so sincere it’s hard to deny its warmth.