Springsteen, Stripped Down: Deliver Me From Nowhere is Not How the Marketing Makes it Seem

Do not buy your ticket for Deliver Me From Nowhere expecting music montages and recognizable hit-after-hit, despite what the marketing may try to sell you.

Instead, this film is a character study. Of a rockstar, lost. Of a small-town boy, torn. And of a man, on the run.

Audiences are brought from what was Bruce Springsteen’s highest career point thus far to his personal lows – fresh off the tour of The River, his chart-topping album, to confronting his childhood with a drunk, abusive father and struggles with fame.

“Bruce was haunted, not in the gothic sense, but spiritually,” said Scott Cooper, writer and director. “I think he was haunted by his very emotionally distant father, haunted by this kind of myth of America — people who are striving for the American dream and falling short (…) I wasn’t chasing the Boss. I’m chasing the man in a bedroom in Colts Neck with a four-track recorder, trying to make sense of his life, the trauma that he’s carried since he was a child.”

Cooper wrote the screenplay based on his 2023 book of the same name, according to the New York Times, after reading the minimal description and subsequent cross-country journey of Nebraska in Springsteen’s memoir.

Springsteen seeks salvation in the bedroom of a home he rents in Colts Neck, New Jersey – not too far from where he grew up in Freehold. To exorcise those demons, his altar is a four-track recorder, a handful of instruments. His prayers, his lyrics.

“I’m feeling guilty of leaving behind the world I come from,” Springsteen – portrayed by Jeremy Allen White – tearfully confesses to manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Scott).

It is a film about isolation and what is found in that emptiness. For Springsteen, it was an album that needed to be told – even with the risk of his career.

Nebraska is a left turn from most of Springsteen’s albums up to that point – and especially different from the commercially successful The River. Where The River was an upbeat, heartland rock album, Nebraska was stripped-down folk.

And as it is shown throughout the movie, adding on all the bells and whistles that come with album production, did not feel right to Springsteen. And thus, Nebraska was released as it was – no changes, just Springsteen and his four-track recorder.

“No single, no tour, no press,” Springsteen-on-screen says at one point. “I don’t even want to be on the cover.”

Springsteen fights for more than the truth of his music, of his storytelling: he’s fighting to keep his head above water, in a music machine that always wants more, more, more, he is used to less, coming from a humble working class family, with a struggling father who keeps him at arm’s length. Nebraska is the culmination of that attempt at not drowning. It is his life vest, in many ways.

Of course, Deliver Me from Nowhere has some of those well-known hits.

Within the first five minutes of the film, we get Born to Run.

At first, it feels random – placed right at the beginning of the film, after a black-and-white childhood flashback. It’s jarring and confusing as to why we would get one of Springsteen’s biggest songs nearly off the bat.

But as the film progresses, it becomes obvious: that juxtaposition of this high moment, off a successful tour and album, and the lows it all plunged him into. It was just the beginning of a fall from grace. Icarus flew too close to the sun.

But it was not pride and hubris that was Springsteen’s downfall.

There are one or two scenes where he sits in his car outside his childhood home, a shell of what it was. What he remembered it as.

We get flashbacks of what it was like inside those walls – 8-year-old Springsteen being forced into light-sparring with an inebriated father, taking a baseball bat to his father in an attempt to defend his mother against him.

Born in the USA is the climax of the movie – it is a battle cry of sorts. We see the fight Springsteen has put up, against himself, against his label to get the record the way he wants it, start to come to a head.

It is a tug-of-war between Bruce Springsteen from a small town in New Jersey and Bruce Springsteen the rockstar. In the end, even when he loses — himself, maybe even his mind a little bit — he still wins, by finding his way back through what has been his North Star: music.

Deliver Me from Nowhere also pays homage to where he grew up: New Jersey. Where all roads lead back to, even as he attempts to escape his demons and head west to California.

Leaf-lined, winding backroads. Lakes and beaches. Diners – which started in New Jersey, by the way. As Springsteen flips through radio channels, there’s even a commercial for Action Park – a now-defunct amusement park known for its dangerous rides and plethora of lawsuits (which garnered some chuckles from the older folks in my NJ theater who probably remember going to it).

And of course, Asbury Park. The shore town is forever part of Springsteen lore, his first album having been titled “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ.”

Once a lively town with a bustling music scene and boardwalk, the 1980s was the beginning of the end for Asbury Park – or, “Asbury,” as it is referred to on screen, a nickname used by us locals despite a northern Jersey town of the same name.

That carousel Springsteen and his love interest frequent throughout the movie? Part of an indoor amusement park that shuttered in the 1990s.

The Stone Pony is now a tour stop for musicians, not a music club for upcoming locals where they may get a chance at being discovered.

Beyond the beach and the boardwalk along the shore of Asbury Park, now, there are multi-million dollar apartment buildings being put up. But on screen, we can see its glory days (no pun intended).

This film is also a romance. No, not between Springsteen and the made-up character of Faye, who is a composite of various love interests throughout this era.

It is love between Springsteen and his manager, Jon Landau. Landau believes in him when no one else does, and fights for his music even when he thinks his idea is crazy.

There is a moment when the two are listening to the demo together, when Springsteen puts his hand on top of Landau’s. It is a simple act, something not commonly shared between two men, but it showed the trust and intimacy between the two.

This type of male emotion, especially as we see Springsteen break down, and at one point, sit in his elderly father’s lap for an emotional heart-to-heart, is the type of display of feelings and warmth not usually shared among men. At least, not witnessed when it is.

For the songs, Jeremy Allen White’s got some vocal chops despite no training. For a trained Springsteen fan – or a Jersey girl like me – you can tell when it’s Allen, versus when it is the true Springsteen, versus when it’s a blend of both. But the resemblance – both physical and vocal – is indistinct at times.

While the documentary-style, words-on-screen ending felt a bit like a cop out, and the black-and-white flashbacks felt a little cliché, Deliver Me from Nowhere was a poignant glimpse into Springsteen’s artistry and struggle that transcends rock stardom.

It is a story of humanity, and as Springsteen sings at the end of the album Nebraska: “at the end of every hard-earned day / people find some reason to believe.”

Check out the trailer for Deliver Me From Nowhere:

 

Deliver Me From Nowhere is now playing in theaters.

 

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