by Nataliia Serebriakova
Worth: $13.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Odessa Young, Stephen Graham Gaby Hoffmann, Paul Walter Hauser, David Krumholtz, Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr
Intro:
... intimate and atmospheric but ultimately lacks the voltage to make Springsteen’s creative solitude truly sing.
In the ranking of biopics about iconic American musicians, Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere would probably take the place of the pale twin brother to last year’s A Complete Unknown by James Mangold. Cooper is a director of a slightly lower caliber than Mangold, and Jeremy Allen White — who plays Bruce Springsteen — is a star of a slightly lesser magnitude than Timothée Chalamet, who portrayed Bob Dylan. Even Springsteen himself is arguably a touch less mythic than Dylan. Still, making biographical dramas about living music idols seems to be turning into a full-fledged trend.
Actor and director Scott Cooper based Deliver Me from Nowhere on Warren Zanes’ 2023 book Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, which in turn drew partly from Springsteen’s own 2016 memoir. The story takes place in 1981, when Bruce was in his early thirties and had already basked in the first rays of fame following the release of The River. The plot follows him as he retreats to a rented house in Colts Neck to record what would become Nebraska, a spare acoustic opus about workers, drifters, and the American underclass.
Cooper alternates scenes from Springsteen’s nearly anonymous everyday life with fragments of his stage performances. It must be said that the star of The Bear and face of Calvin Klein, Jeremy Allen White, doesn’t particularly resemble the musician. At times, it feels as though he’s about to set the guitar aside and reach for a frying pan, just like his chef alter ego Carmy in The Bear. Yet as the film progresses, it begins to pull you in — largely thanks to its bleak black-and-white flashbacks to Bruce’s memories of his abusive, alcoholic father and his tender bond with his mother.
Stephen Graham plays the father — a striking reversal from his most recent TV role in Adolescence. Graham excels at portraying complicated paternal figures, whether it’s a caring father of a troubled teen or, as in Cooper’s film, a beer-bloated patriarch who still has moments of genuine closeness with his son. In one quietly moving scene, instead of sending Bruce to school, he takes him to the cinema in his work truck. These flashbacks give the film a second wind, imbuing it with intimacy and emotional depth.
Cinema itself plays a symbolic role in Springsteen’s life here: he re-watches Terrence Malick’s Badlands, a film that mirrors his own childhood memories. Masanobu Takayanagi’s stunning cinematography, in turn, visually rhymes with Malick’s imagery — endless cornfields where children’s silhouettes vanish, autumn leaves glowing in the sunset light.
As for the rest of the cast, there’s little for them to do. Odessa Young plays a blonde waitress who briefly dates Bruce — and that’s essentially her entire role. Jeremy Strong, as Bruce’s manager Jon Landau, reprises his familiar archetype of a “gray cardinal” from Succession and The Apprentice, though here his narrative influence is considerably smaller.
In the end, if the strength of A Complete Unknown lay in Chalamet’s electric energy, Jeremy Allen White — despite his effort and intensity — never quite sparks. Deliver Me from Nowhere is intimate and atmospheric but ultimately lacks the voltage to make Springsteen’s creative solitude truly sing.
