Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Scott Cooper delivers a new kind of musical biopic that should delight fans of The Boss.
Acoustic dreams: Jeremy Allen White.
Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.
“No singles, no press, no tour, no joke.” These were the chilling words delivered by Bruce Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) to Columbia Records executive Al Teller (David Krumholtz). Just as Springsteen was on the cusp of international stardom, he decided to bury his sixth studio album for purposes of artistic credibility. The songs were so personal, recorded in his bedroom, that he wanted them to speak for themselves without the garnish of explanation or fanfare. Of course, those already reaping the rewards of the Springsteen bandwagon were hoping to see a shiny, money-making album but were forced to bow to the demands of ‘The Boss.’ This unorthodox career change – to essentially release an unvarnished demo tape directly onto vinyl – was the antithesis of the gear shift that Bob Dylan made when going electric, as chronicled in last year’s A Complete Unknown. Essentially, Springsteen was jumping off the rock’n’roll wagon for a folk interlude and it was a private and musical exorcism that Team Springsteen was duty-bound to weather.
The director Scott Cooper made his feature debut with Crazy Heart (2009) which followed a transformative period in the life of an alcoholic Country singer, for which Jeff Bridges won an Oscar. In much the same vein, Deliver Me from Nowhere is the character study of a tortured singer-songwriter, in this case the real-life Bruce Springsteen. More interestingly, it is about the evolution of Springsteen’s most personal, seminal album Nebraska (1982), which illuminated the ghosts of his childhood and private preoccupations of the time. Unlike many a recent musical biopic (and there have been heaps), Cooper’s film doesn’t attempt to render a prosthetic-perfect portrait of The Boss, or cram in a cats’ cradle of career highlights, but to concentrate on the creative process. Jeremy Allen Write really doesn’t look like the singer, but he captures the mannerisms of the star and the inner turmoil of the man. Like Dylan in A Complete Unknown, he’s seen patrolling the urban streets of America, with hands in pockets, head bent down. This Springsteen is anything but a charismatic figure, and hardly a great conversationalist, and one wonders what his girlfriend Faye (Odessa Young) saw in him.
For context, Cooper recounts the singer’s early years growing up in Freehold, New Jersey, these flashbacks shot in black-and-white with the eight-year-old Bruce (nicely embodied by Matthew Anthony Pellicano) warily keeping his distance from his abusive father (Stephen Graham). And so we get two Springsteens for the price of one, without all the clutter of the intervening years, while providing an emotional foundation for the songs that meant so much to him on the Nebraska album (along with his fascination for Terrence Malick’s Badlands (1973), also a major artistic influence for Cooper).
The director suffuses his film with an authentic ambience, as is his wont, providing Springsteen’s fans with a vivid depiction of the man’s creative soul. Non-believers, though, may find it a little dour for their tastes, as the singer mopes his way around New Jersey in search of his mojo. Nevertheless, there is enough here that is both insightful and unusual about the creative process to engage the average filmgoer.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, David Krumholtz, Gaby Hoffmann, Harrison Gilbertson, Grace Gummer, Marc Maron, Matthew Anthony Pellicano.
Dir Scott Cooper, Pro Scott Cooper, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Eric Robinson and Scott Stuber, Screenplay Scott Cooper, from the book by Warren Zanes, Ph Masanobu Takayanagi, Pro Des Stefania Cella, Ed Pamela Martin, Music Jeremiah Fraites, Costumes Kasia Walicka Maimone, Sound Jon Title, Dialect coaches Audrey LeCrone and Kohli Calhoun.
Gotham Group/Night Exterior/Bluegrass 7-Walt Disney Studios.
119 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 24 October 2025. Cert. 12A.
