My Thoughts on the Film, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere…

Chills went down my spine within the first four minutes of this film. It was a clip from a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band concert, with the titular rock star played by Jeremy Allen White, performing “Born to Run.” White looked, gestured, and strummed the guitar, sounding so much like Springsteen that it was scary.

Let me say here that I am a big fan of what biographies and biopics are doing these days: they chronicle only specific portions of the subject’s life. Think A Complete Unknown, the film about Bob Dylan, based on Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties, by Elijah Wald.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is a film based on the book of the same name by Warren Zanes. This film, like the book, chronicles only a portion of the superstar’s life, from the end of The River tour to the recording and release of Nebraska.

Being a hot commodity with the single, “Hungry Heart,” Bruce didn’t know what to do with his fame. He felt trapped, unsure, and frightened by all of it. And he fell into a deep depression because of this struggle.

In the meantime, he recorded songs using a scaled-back recording device in the bedroom of a home he rented in Colts Neck, New Jersey. There, he recorded raw, stripped-down versions of songs that would later appear on both Nebraska and Born In The U.S.A.

An attempted intimate relationship with a single mother, Faye Romano, played by Odessa Young, punctuated his fears and drove him further into himself; it forced him into inaction, which meant he stopped returning her calls, and their relationship dwindled into nothing. “I don’t wanna hurt anybody,” he admitted to her in what was their last conversation.

Struggling with his depression, he admitted to his long-time friend and manager, Jon Landau, as played by Jeremy Strong, that many of the stripped-down songs he recorded in that fabled bedroom were to be pressed and released as is, with no press, no tour, and no photo of him on the album’s cover. Despite the artist's restrictions, Nebraska landed at the Number 3 spot on the Billboard charts in 1982.

Aside from the chills I felt at the beginning of the film and being in awe of White’s, Strong’s, and Young’s performances, I was moved to tears by the reconciliation between Bruce and his father, Douglas (Stephen Graham), at the movie’s end.

I am the only Bruce Springsteen fan in my group of friends—I was alone and in the nosebleeds at the Born In The U.S.A. concert at Giants Stadium when I was 15—so I immediately loved the book and the film. But I would recommend this film for the performances alone, with White playing a dynamic character who endures quite the metamorphosis therein. A Complete Unknown received eight Academy Award nominations but received none. I hope for much better with Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere.