Only Springsteen Would Enjoy His New Movie

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How do you make a movie based on an album that famously had zero promotion and zero singles? You try to fudge it. The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White takes on the mantle of Bruce Springsteen, one of rock’s defining figures over the last fifty years. Making a biopic of Springsteen should be easy: you showcase his rise to superstardom, you play the hits, and you roll credits. Scott Cooper’s latest, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, captures a specific period in the singer’s career– one where he was spiraling out due to depression and apparently dealing with the ghosts of his abusive upbringing. The album that resulted from that period, 1982’s Nebraska, was a success, even if none of the songs would be on a greatest hits album. 

Deliver Me from Nowhere wouldn’t be terrible if its only crime was shoehorning Springsteen hits that did not appear on Nebraska. You’ll hear snippets of Born to Run, Hungry Heart, Born in the U.S.A., and I’m on Fire. Otherwise, the soundtrack is filled with White’s covers of Nebraska tracks. Which is fine and a credit to White, who does an admirable job in covering The Boss’s tracks. No, the bigger problem is that Deliver Me from Nowhere takes every cliche in the music biopic strategy and delivers them wholesale. It’s so apparent, I was almost ready to leave the theater. I’ll circle back to this shortly, but Deliver Me from Nowhere is dreadful. 

Following the massive success of his double album, The River, Springsteen retreated to his roots. He’d been on the road for a long time, and this was his first break in a while. His producer, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), would prefer Springsteen to start work on a new album, given his incredible star power and marketability. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say. Going back home brings home a lot of complex feelings in Springsteen– specifically his relationship with his father (Stephen Graham). 

One evening, he catches a television airing of Terrence Malick’s 1973 masterpiece, Badlands. In that film, Martin Sheen’s Kit is a twenty-something boy who is mad with the world. The turning point in Badlands comes when Kit shoots his girlfriend’s father dead, and the two of them (Sheen’s Kit and Sissy Spacek’s Holly) burn the house down to make it look like a suicide. The characters of Kit and Holly were based on the real-life pair Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, who inspired Malick. Why am I telling you all this about Badlands? Well, it was a pivotal piece in the creation of Springsteen’s Nebraska. According to Deliver Me from Nowhere, Springsteen must’ve seen a lot of himself in those rebellious young people who weren’t going to put up with the abuses of the world any longer. 

This is the inspiration that Springsteen needs to put together Nebraska, but it's going to be unlike anything he’s ever done before. It’s going to be stripped down and recorded on cassette tape– a deeply personal album. One that could’ve destroyed his career. 

Outside of the memorable singles being shoehorned into Deliver Me from Nowhere, there’s also a romance for good measure. Faye Romano (Odessa Young) is the hometown girl that Springsteen falls for, but he can’t imagine he’ll ever be good enough for her. In actuality, Faye Romano never existed. She’s simply fragments of women that Springsteen has been involved with over the years. 

All the scenes of Springsteen’s childhood are with Graham, Springsteen’s mother (Gaby Hoffmann), and a young Springsteen (Matthew Pellicano Jr.). They’re filmed in black-in-white in case you’d forget that you were watching a flashback. Graham plays the one-note drunk, absentee father figure– a guy who rules over his family with violence. Although Springsteen would make Nebraska in reference to that era of his life, unless you’re familiar with the songs, the movie rarely connects a specific moment in his life to the songs he’s written. There’s a sequence late in the movie that shows Springsteen on his way to LA, and he’s stopped at a local carnival. In the middle-distance, Springsteen sees a presumably happy father and son standing there. In this moment, I said to myself, “I hope they don’t show that father and son, and then replace the characters with young Springsteen and his father.” And guess what? The film went and did it! The ultimate forgiveness scene that takes place at the end of the film couldn’t be more painful as White and Graham channel Will Ferrell and James Caan from Jon Favreau’s Christmas Classic, Elf. 

I can’t imagine audiences being satisfied with Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. Frankly, I’m not even sure Springsteen should be satisfied with it, even as he goes around doing press for it. Sure, you’ll hear snippets of hits like Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A., but the film is laser-focused on Nebraska, an album that quite intentionally has no singles. There’s a scene in the movie where a record producer finds it hard to believe that they’d release a Bruce Springsteen album without any singles. I imagine that was the same conversation that Cooper had with the producers of the film, and they responded similarly. I’m not saying we needed to have a movie about Springsteen’s early struggles and how Born to Run came to be (well, maybe I am), but what we get here isn’t good enough. You’re better off turning on the record player and spinning The River again. [D]

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is now playing in theaters.

Here are the movies I caught up with in October:

As always, if you’d like to follow along on Letterboxd, my account can be found here.

Podcast

🎙️Episode 206 of the It's the Pictures podcast features a discussion on actor Keanu Reeves with guest Andrew Crump

Miscellaneous

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Last week, Variety shared that John Williams will score Steven Spielberg's next feature. It will be their 30th collaboration together.

Netflix has acquired the rights to the famous board game franchise, Catan. While I'd put public knowledge of Catan way below something like Monopoly, it still has quite a big following. I imagine any TV show or movie attached to this franchise will have to do with a family not speaking to each other after playing the game.

I'm friendly with at least two members of the Gotham Awards nominating committee, so I wanted to share their nominations here. While their selections don't often collaborate fully with an event like the Oscars, there are some lovely selections of movies and performances you probably haven't seen yet.