I love a good “a-ha” or “oh-no” moment that turns a movie upside down. What I didn’t expect to love, was two hours of a man struggling to find his life. No twists or turns, just a man trying to stand.
Sitting in the theatre watching heartthrob, Jeremy Allen White, play America’s rockstar, Bruce Springsteen, I floated through the story waiting. Waiting for a moment that never came.
“Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere” is a biopic film based on a biography published May of 2023. It is a story of fear and those who persevere through it.
Starting with Springsteen finishing up tour and heading to his hometown to prepare for the next big hit, the rest follows his journey during this time, recording in his bedroom with a guitar, a harmonica and his voice. Following Springsteen, the audience is shown the background and process behind his most surprising album – “Nebraska”, a folk album.
Not what the artist is initially known for, and not at all what I was expecting.
Springsteen’s agent Jon Landau — played by Jeremy Strong — and record executive Al Teller — played by David Krumholtz — sit in a luscious late 70s office and listen to “Nebraska” – the title track of the album. White’s rendition of Springsteen plateaus through the room, never really changing.
“Is it just this? For the whole song?” says Teller.
Audiences apparently feel the same way about the movie. Is this it?
With a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 3.3/5 on Letterboxd, the film has many people wondering why they even made a movie of the star to begin with.
In the midst of Hollywood’s re-make mania, biographies and biopics have been around for as long as people have wanted to know about the lives of others. While biopics may feel like a re-make’s older brother, they are undoubtedly more important. They shed light into the overlooked parts of peoples lives. Parts that may seem suprising for people we deem untouchable.
From what the movie portrays it was a hard time for Springsteen, who has admitted to battling depression which became a focal point of the film. Springsteen struggles to find connection with others, believing himself incapable of a life other than the one he feels trapped in.
Much like the melody in “Nebraska”, the film stays emotionally stagnant. There are small spikes of anger and what could be called love but overall, the story stays the same. It forces the viewer to sit in the stagnant and uncomfortable. It is an interesting choice, but I don’t think the movie would have hit as hard any other way.
“Nebraska” is what Springsteen needed to create, even if it wasn’t what people were expecting or may not even had liked. It is an album of stories — stories of so many people who feel trapped in the cycle of life.
In the same way, this biopic is a film that needed to be told. While not full of the glitz that other biographical films have grabbed onto, this movie focuses on the hard life of the rockstar. The ones who toe the line between creating for oneself and creating for the masses.