‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’: Jeremy Allen White Becomes a Reflective Portrait of the Boss During the Making of a Timeless Album

Alci Rengifo

Rock biopics have been undergoing a new cinematic resurgence over the past several years. Some of the better ones make the creative choice of not attempting to encompass an artist’s entire life, but focus on a particular moment in time that says enough about them. That was writer-director Scott Cooper’s approach when he adapted Warren Zane’s book, about the making of a timeless Springsteen record, into his latest biopic, “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.” It does not tell the history of the Boss, the E Street Band’s formation, or rowdy backstage revelations. You can watch this movie never having played one of Springsteen’s albums in their entirety. It’s not even loud. Cooper’s film is instead a portrait of rock giant Bruce Springsteen as an artist dealing with depression and somber memories, channeling it all into one of his most personal works, the 1982 album “Nebraska.”

Cooper does begin with the volume briefly turned up. We see Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) on tour in 1981 Cincinnati with the E Street Band, belting “Born to Run” before an adoring crowd. Their latest album, “The River,” is a hit and the pressure is on for Springsteen to deliver a worthy sequel. His record label is convinced he’s one album away from reaching true stardom. The singer’s producer and manager, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), likes to give him space and notices Springsteen does seem to be distracted. Not a big city boy, Springsteen has rented a house in Colts Neck, New Jersey. Alone in his thoughts, his mind keeps going back to memories of growing up in Freehold, New Jersey circa 1957, watching his working class father Dutch (Stephen Graham) become a frustrated alcoholic. Clearly in a state of gloom, Springsteen reads Flannery O’Connor and comes across Terrence Malick’s “Badlands,” a great classic about two murderous lovers on the run, playing on TV. Not in the mood to get back into a studio, Springsteen buys a Teac 144 Portastudio recorder and starts laying down haunting folk songs on four-track cassette tape.

Films about musicians tend to depend even more on the functions of the artistic process than other genres. With few exceptions, most rock star portraits fall into overly familiar patterns when it comes to the basics of a story. “Deliver Me from Nowhere” has the expected elements of the singer working hard only to then be terrified of success, feeling deep unhappiness even as the world starts becoming their oyster. Through an old high school classmate, Springsteen meets Faye (Odessa Young), a single mother and music fan who hangs out at the Stone Pony, a local venue where the Boss likes to join the house band for covers of John Lee Hooker and Little Richard. She can be so nice and caring, bringing into Springsteen’s life something sorely missing. This also means poor Faye is fated to learn that rock stars are erratic, moody and selfish personalities that tend to disappear, feel the high pressure of their business and are not atomic family material. Faye telegraphs it for the audience during a date with Springsteen, when they ride a carousel together, kiss for the first time and she whispers “this is a big mistake.” 

What proves much more engaging are the moments where Cooper focuses primarily on Springsteen putting together the songs that will eventually become “Nebraska.” Instead of having too much exposition in the dialogue, he visually demonstrates the connection between what Springsteen absorbs and how it translates to emerging lyrics. He watches “Badlands” and looks at newspaper clippings of the murders that inspired the Malick film, expressing it into the album’s eventual title song. He revisits Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter,” a great American film the singer remembers Dutch taking him to see as a kid. The echo and ambiance of the “Nebraska” album are then linked to the same folk power of the film. It is also essential to show Springsteen reading Flannery O’Connor, since the writer’s work influenced the way “Nebraska” functions as a collection of short stories, with characters capturing life in America’s downtrodden corners. Put on “Johnny 99” and “State Trooper” and virtual movies run through your mind, especially since the stripped down acoustic approach makes the language so prominent. Cooper is a good fit since his own films, like “Hostiles” and the country music drama “Crazy Heart,” also about a singer feeling lost, work as intimate stories linked to folk culture and history. 

Jeremy Allen White’s performance deserves acknowledgement for its potent restraint. He has the perfect visage to play a singer who also embodies a rugged, working class American ethos. FX’s “The Bear” has made him especially famous for his role as an underdog chef, and here he is playing a man achieving great fame who has not settled scars within himself. He feels more at home away from the roar of a city. Cooper films his memories in black and white, evoking classic American films and images. One gets the sense there was tension in the Springsteen home stemming from the aimlessness of a father covering his own depression with drinking. We never see Dutch beat Springsteen. What the father creates instead is the sort of environment that can leave someone with permanent fears and low self-esteem. This is a very quiet role portraying Springsteen as an inhibited sort of guy who lives the nightmare of already predicting how he will ruin things with Faye. White isn’t tasked with doing exhausting concert sequences, but instead must focus on what Springsteen might have been like hiding away in his rural home, putting thoughts to paper and recording on the Portastudio. For a while his only witness to the creation of the music is Mike Batlan (Paul Walter Hauser), his engineer during the Colts Neck recording sessions.

For Springsteen fans and audiophiles there are still plenty of bits of lore, including how “Born in the U.S.A.” started as a Colts Neck demo before ending up on Springsteen’s 1984 hit album of the same name. For cinephiles, there is the added touch that the title itself came from a Paul Schrader screenplay pitched to Springsteen as a potential acting gig. Then there are intriguing moments dealing with the technical challenges in releasing “Nebraska” exactly as the singer intended, or Columbia Records executive Al Teller (David Krumholtz) demanding an actual rock album instead of a folk experiment. Cooper briskly covers these sections, never bothering to give any members of the E Street Band attention. What matters in this story is Springsteen as a depressed artist pushing back the pressure to make hits in order to record something very true to where his heart was at that point in time. Yes, he would roar on into titanic success and cultural prominence, but even superstars are humans at the end of the day. “Deliver Me from Nowhere,” with its heartfelt performance by White, becomes a broader statement on using expression as a way to overcome the dark clouds of the soul.

“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” releases Oct. 24 in theaters nationwide.