While it’s true that the musician biopic has absolutely seen better days, I was continuously trying to be optimistic for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, for no reason other than my undying love for Bruce Springsteen. My expectations remained moderate, hoping to at least feel moved by the music even if the rest of the film was subpar. I was prepared for something like Walk The Line, which was poorly paced and formulaic but at least featured some great performances and an excellent soundtrack. But Deliver Me From Nowhere was far worse than that. In its shoddy attempt to recapture the success of A Complete Unknown (perhaps the last scraps of success to be found by a musical biopic from here on out), Deliver Me From Nowhere manages to feel both exhausting and lifeless. It hardly summarizes the making of Nebraska and Born in the USA with coherence, much less with passion or energy or urgency. I have, and always will, find Springsteen to be a generational talent, and I am most moved by his creative voice, his insistence on making music that is moving, that has something to say. But this filmic adaptation seems to have no respect for that.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere draws on the musician biopic formula of films like Walk The Line, but attempts to give it a more interesting edge by following the specific-career-moment structure of A Complete Unknown. Yet even by choosing Springsteen’s dark Nebraska moment, the film feels more like an SNL sketch of a biopic than an actual biopic. It oscillates between moments from Bruce’s childhood (in black and white), and the creation of his album Nebraska, a moody folk record which he recorded and wrote privately, struggling with depression amidst his skyrocketing fame. Despite feeling like a total slog near the end, the film doesn’t seem to devote any attention to Bruce as a person, to his tenacity for songwriting, his motivations, his stage presence, his individuality. It manages to feel both long and fruitless. There are no payoffs, no moving emotional moments. As a huge Springsteen fan, it was immensely disappointing that even the musical moments in the film aren’t strong enough for it to be enjoyable or defendable.
Jeremy Allen White looks like Bruce Springsteen if you squint, but the pure silliness of the script doesn’t give him the opportunity to do anything but an impression. Springsteen’s career is prolific, to say the least. There are so many fascinating and important moments throughout his life, and his music is timeless because it has remained earnest and genuine even when it didn’t make sense for him to be so specific and personal and raw. The making of Nebraska is absolutely one of these moments, but Scott Cooper must have only read the Sparknotes of Warren Zanes’ Deliver Me From Nowhere, or perhaps assumed the audience had.
It’s difficult to discern who the film was even made for. Certainly not devoted Springsteen fans, who could pick apart the inaccuracies. Nor was this intended as an introduction to Springsteen, because it is devoid of so much useful context. The most likely answer here is that this was intended as a vehicle for an Oscar campaign, or in hopes that swaths of Springsteen fans would run to the theater. All this film did was make me wish I were watching Springsteen on Broadway or Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band: The Legendary 1979 No Nukes Concerts. It’s no secret to anybody that the conventional musician biopic is becoming a wasteland of a genre, and it’s disappointing to see directors dredge up important moments of rock history to be turned into careless, boring movies. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere does a horrendous disservice to the career of my beloved Bruce Springsteen, and indicates that the occasionally successful art of the musical biopic may already be six feet under.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
2025
dir. Scott Cooper
119 min.
Now playing @ West Newton Cinema, AMC Boston Common, and AMC Assembly Row
