by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $15.00
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:
... may trip into the odd musical biopic trope to its own detriment, but as both a viscerally personal snapshot in the life of Bruce Springsteen, and a document of a defining moment in music history ... it is beautifully realised.
Ever since he got the Academy to recognise Jeff Bridges with the dirt road country drama Crazy Heart, writer/director Scott Cooper has built a decent career from intriguing foundational concepts for films. From Joel Edgerton as an FBI agent slowly morphing into Johnny Depp (Black Mass), to childhood domestic horror filtered through Algonquian folklore (Antlers), to a Frontier-era murder mystery guest-starring Edgar Allan Poe (The Pale Blue Eye). While his overall efficacy in carrying them out can be argued, the actor turned director knows a compelling idea when he sees one.
Taking a look at the darkest period of Bruce Springsteen’s musical journey seems like a no-brainer, and that’s before knowing that the Boss himself worked closely with Cooper to bring this to life.
Focusing on the creation of his 1982 album Nebraska (the demos for which were also further developed for his international breakout hit Born in the U.S.A.), Cooper and DP Masanobu Takayanagi do a fantastic job of making the film look like the album itself sounds. Some of the images borrow directly from the music, like a black-and-white sequence of a young Springsteen running through a cornfield with his sister set to ‘Mansion on the Hill’, and the visuals overall bounce between that aesthetic for the flashbacks and more standard film stock for the contemporaneous scenes. But in terms of channelling that same overwhelming air of melancholy, exhibiting those brutally honest portraits of reckless desperation and clinging onto whatever facsimile of hope that can keep you moving, it is shockingly effective.
Jeremy Allen White, whose track record with intensely physical performances in The Iron Claw and The Bear has shown his star steadily rise over the last handful of years, completely melts into his role here. When he’s up on-stage belting out ‘Born to Run’, or talking about how much he loves ‘Frankie Teardrop’, or gently teasing out his inner turmoil to create the Nebraska tape, he is a dead ringer for the man himself. But it’s in the quieter moments that he truly excels, exhuming the true depths of that turmoil and pushing it right into the camera lens. At one point, when asked to say as much (or as little) as he needs to, he does indeed say what needs saying… and breaks just about every heart in the process.
Now, the story structure around all this can feel a bit stretched and wayward at times, particularly as it involves Odessa Young as love interest Faye. The chemistry just doesn’t click in the way that the film seemingly wants it to, and makes her inclusion here feel more requisite than absolutely essential for the story… until it becomes clear that she is basically a walking misdirect. This is indeed a love story of sorts, but the significant other in question isn’t Faye; it’s Jeremy Strong as his manager Jon Landau. The sheer conviction behind Landau’s determination to let this album be released, seeing it much like Springsteen does as a work of art that needs to exist (not in a ‘sorrow makes good art’ way, but in a ‘this catharsis is what is necessary for him’ kind of way), makes for one of Strong’s best performances, and their chemistry together is peak ‘healthy male bonding’ material. Stephen Graham’s turn as Springsteen’s father is just as compelling, skating a very thin line between exuding an abusive domestic influence, and having enough awareness of that fact to want to prepare his own son for when he may have to stop him. He embodies the troubled influence that went into the lyrics ‘A man turns his back on his family/Well, he just ain’t no good’.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere may trip into the odd musical biopic trope to its own detriment, but as both a viscerally personal snapshot in the life of Bruce Springsteen, and a document of a defining moment in music history that would lead to modern bedroom pop (when the day comes that Nicole Dollanganger gets her own biopic, it could reasonably look and feel just like this), it is beautifully realised. It is Scott Cooper’s strongest directorial effort since his debut with Crazy Heart, balancing the subject’s mental health struggles and his artistic endeavours without succumbing to the kind of ‘misery as art’ fetishization that far too many stories about artists in their bleakest moments end up resorting to.
It’s a film about music not as product, but as raw personal expression – as it should be.
