RECORD SCRATCH

Bruce Springsteen Gets the Most Clichéd Biopic Imaginable With ‘Deliver Me to Nowhere’

The Boss deserves so much better than a movie this corny.

It wouldn’t be awards season without an obvious and ponderous music biopic, and Scott Cooper fulfills that requirement with Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, an origin story for the Boss’ beloved 1982 album Nebraska that’s like a greatest-hits package of genre clichés.

Drumming up zero tension or momentum, both because it barely boasts a narrative and because it spells everything out in the most ham-fisted way imaginable, the Crazy Heart and Out of the Furnace director’s latest—showing at the New York Film Festival ahead of its Oct. 24 theatrical premiere—is affected and plodding and, thus, the exact opposite of its subject. From its script to its score to its lead performance by Jeremy Allen White, it’s nothing more than a shallow cover song.

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Coming off a triumphant 1981 tour in support of The River, Bruce Springsteen (White) says he “just needs to get home, slow things down,” and his manager and producer Jon Landeau (Jeremy Strong) agrees that he needs “a change of scenery.” That turns out to be a waterfront home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, where he retreats to write demos that will eventually be jumping-off points for studio work with his E Street Band.

White mimics Bruce’s raspy voice and forlorn poses, and at this stage in his life, the rocker is a bit adrift. To hammer that point home, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere has him visit a car dealership where a salesman tells him that he knows who he is, to which Bruce replies, “That makes one of us.”

Bruce is on the precipice of superstardom and his record label (embodied by David Krumholtz’s Columbia executive Al Teller) wants to strike while “the iron’s hot!” Rather than crafting more surefire hits, however, Bruce withdraws from life, reading Flannery O’Connor stories, watching Badlands, and visiting the library to research (on microfiche) Charles Starkweather, the killer who inspired Terrence Malick’s film.

Such details are, historically speaking, accurate, although Cooper depicts them in one-to-one fashion that suggests a Wikipedia page come to groan-worthy life. That approach continues as the artist begins plumbing the past for songwriting material and Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere stages those remembrances as ominous black-and-white sequences in which the young Bruce (Matthew Anthony Pellicano) contends with abusive drunk dad Douglas (Stephen Graham) and tries to protect put-upon mom Adele (Gaby Hoffman).

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Douglas and Adele are presented as such hoary archetypes that the material swiftly devolves into parody. Not helping matters is Cooper’s fondness for holding the audience’s hand every step of the way, as when Bruce pens “Mansion on the Hill” and the film cuts to Douglas taking young Bruce and his sister to, you guessed it, a mansion on a hill.

As he works on his rough-around-the-edges tunes, Bruce falls into an unexpected romance with local waitress and single mom Faye Romano (Odessa Young), and their happy times together on and around the Asbury Park boardwalk compel him to write “Atlantic City” and “I’m on Fire.”

Nonetheless, the real impetus behind his solo output is his scary and traumatizing dad, who in the ’50s takes him to see The Night of the Hunter, and who in the present needs rescuing in California, resulting in a tender moment designed to facilitate the film’s comforting climactic acts of forgiveness and atonement.

Based on Warren Zanes’ book of the same name, Cooper’s script gracelessly says everything out loud. Badlands’ house fire is echoed by a late fantasy vision of Bruce’s house on fire as well as him and Jon talking about “burning it down” at Power Station studio.

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Paternal violence (in cinema and real-life) is omnipresent. Jon explains to his wife that Bruce’s current songs are “deeply personal,” “dark,” and written by a “condemned man,” and that Bruce is scared of success and feels guilty about leaving behind the only world (working-class New Jersey) he’s ever known or loved. Eager to get in on the expository action, Young’s Faye scolds Bruce during a late chat for being ruled by “fear” and moving to California because he’s running from his problems rather than dealing with them.

White broods without respite but Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere casts the Boss as merely a soulful dynamo who’s tormented by his upbringing and, with Nebraska, “trying to find some real in all the noise.” He does, of course, and afterwards, he struggles to recapture his original sessions’ magic in the studio, leading to lots of anguish that motivates the loyal Jon to go above and beyond to preserve the echo-y distortion and imperfections of Bruce’s cassette recordings.

There’s no sense, however, that any of this is in doubt, since everyone is fully committed to Bruce as an artist and a commercial powerhouse, and willing to bend over backwards to please him—especially given that he’s additionally written “Born in the U.S.A.,” which is immediately recognized as a smash, as evidenced by the hokey smiles that materialize on the faces of Jon and engineer Chuck Plotkin (Marc Maron) upon hearing it with backing by the E Street Band.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is a collection of stock montages, trailer-ready one-liners, and musical numbers in which White does a serviceable Bruce imitation, and its insights are limited to the idea that Nebraska was born out of Bruce’s daddy issues and that, for example, when he sang about trees, he was thinking about being a child standing beneath a tree.

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Cooper lionizes Jon as a stalwart ally and friend, yet he falls short of getting under the Boss’ skin, resorting to connect-the-dots explanations which render him, and his acclaimed LP, small and simplistic. As when Bruce expresses his anger and frustration (with himself, over Faye) by driving really fast and then skidding out in the middle of the road, the film is basic through and through.

It’s also corny beyond belief. Maudlin manipulativeness doesn’t get much more extreme, and it certainly sabotages Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, betraying the raw, guileless beauty of the album it purports to celebrate.

Nick SchagerEntertainment Critic

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