As inevitable as summer turning to fall, awards season means not just the usual outlay of serious, adult-oriented dramas, but also biopics of world leaders, artists, musicians, and related “tortured genius” types. It’s the epitome of risk-averse filmmaking driven by an obsessive adherence to the specifics of an easily digestible template, one where the audience can predict every plot point and every emotional beat with certainty.
A perfect example of this type of biopic can be found in the bid for awards glory from Scott Cooper (Black Mass, Crazy Heart): Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, an overly familiar, painfully reductive, downbeat drama centred on the two-year period in which New Jersey’s Bruce Springsteen (played by a sweaty Jeremy Allen White giving neck-straining best) wrote, recorded, and released arguably his best album, Nebraska.
When we first encounter Cooper’s fictionalized version of Springsteen, the singer-musician and the E Street Band are minutes away from concluding their sold-out tour in Cincinnati. An exhausted Springsteen greets his longtime manager, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, distractingly channelling his inner Woody Allen), with a monosyllabic response. Depicted here as Springsteen’s friend, mentor, and protector, Landau suggests a breakaway from touring and performing so Springsteen can recharge and hopefully begin work on his next album for Columbia Records.
The suits at Columbia Records, personified by Al Teller (David Krumholtz), want to strike before Springsteen’s growing popularity begins to fade. That means more songs, more recording sessions, and another tour, all to feed the record label’s money-making machine. They want more of the same from Springsteen: big and bluesy rock anthems, the kind that euphoric audiences filling a sold-out stadium will sing along with the Boss.
It’s almost enough to make Springsteen, a working-class (white) hero to many, especially in the Northeast, burdened by the usual assortment of personal demons. These are unresolved, family-related traumas, and uncertainty about his ability to duplicate his past success, mixed with an unspoken, but ever present touch of “imposter syndrome.” He wants to run away from a life he seemingly can’t control anymore.
Demands of family, friends, and fans put a strain on an already fragile Springsteen. Pressure sends him to a rental home in Colt Neck, New Jersey, not far from his hometown of Freehold, or Asbury Park. The proximity to both allows Springsteen to take his new car, a Dodge Challenger, for the occasional drive, sometimes to visit the now-abandoned home where he grew up as the only son of Adele (Gaby Hoffmann) and Douglas Springsteen (Stephen Graham). The film shows how the latter was an abusive alcoholic who would sometimes to join a local bar band at the Stone Pony.
On one of his side trips home, Springsteen meets Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a single mom and longtime fan. They strike up an obviously doomed romantic relationship. It’s obvious from the start that Faye wants more (i.e., commitment) while Springsteen, increasingly fixated on writing and recording the songs that will appear on Nebraska, can’t handle a full-time relationship. He’s too caught up in his own emotional pain to open himself up to the reciprocity needed for a relationship to survive, let alone thrive.
Faye serves as a fictional creation within the film world. She’s a narrative and thematic foil for Springsteen. Given the interiority needed to write, compose, and record a song, an undramatic process Cooper fails to flip into actual drama, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere leans heavily on the rocker sitting at a table, looking interminably toward the far horizon, then jotting down a few lines while Terence Malick’s 1972 rural crime-thriller Badlands plays on repeat in the background.
Besides taking a reductive approach to psychology, directly connecting Springsteen’s issues to his painful upbringing, Cooper plucks literal images from Springsteen’s songs and renders them in the aforementioned black-and-white flashbacks. In addition to playing Badlands on repeat, Cooper has Springsteen venture to his local library for research. He ties in the themes of bad parenting and generational trauma, bookends a flashback to a matinee of Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter with a present-day screening, and hints at resolution that will send Springsteen to the next, presumably healthier chapter in his life.
What we do hear of Nebraska, initially recorded on four-track demo before its release, minus “Born in the U.S.A.”, highlights Springsteen’s mastery of form, tone, and mood. A contrast to Springsteen’s rock albums, Nebraska represents music in its purest form. It’s the creative expression of a singer-songwriter accompanied by nothing else besides his own voice, a guitar, and a harmonica, intended, at least initially, for an audience of one before being released to the world. It’s a transcendent anti-Dylan-goes-electric album, a gift to both Springsteen fans and casual music listeners alike. The film is not quite that.
