‘Springsteen’ more character study than biopic
Writer-director Scott Cooper doesn t want to make a music biopic At least not the kind of music biopic you expect Instead in Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere he offers a character scrutiny as biopic riding a similar groove as his Oscar-winning directorial debut Crazy Heart Deliver Me From Nowhere doesn t try to tell the entire life story of New Jersey s beloved rock bard Bruce The Boss Springsteen in fact it doesn t even really cover his biggest hits Instead Deliver Me From Nowhere which Cooper based on the Warren Zanes book of the same name focuses on a contemplative period in Springsteen s life and career a time when the musician dug deep to exorcise his own demons producing the songs for his acoustic album Nebraska The Bear star Jeremy Allen White hunches into leather jackets and flannels dark curls coquettishly kissing his brow in order to embody Springsteen on screen Like the majority musical biopics these days the audience has to enter into an agreement with the film suspending disbelief Does White disappear into the role Does he look exactly like Springsteen No But he s the symbol of Springsteen here and he captures the star s flinty gaze and rock n roll rasp while performing the songs himself and brings his own intense soulfulness to the role Using Zane s book Cooper wants to present a evaluation of the creative process and how isolating transporting and transformative it can be to tear out your soul spill your guts and express something so personal that it becomes universal as Springsteen did with Nebraska Holed up at a rental home in Colts Neck New Jersey in late Bruce has just finished a tour and is trying to readjust to the quiet which is just too loud He tries to take the edge off with nights at his hometown rock club The Stone Pony and a situationship with a fan Faye Odessa Young But his past haunts him especially his childhood with an alcoholic emotionally neglectful father Stephen Graham and loving but turbulent mother Gaby Hoffman Cooper visualizes Springsteen s emotional and creative churn through black-and-white childhood flashbacks and scenes of him driving around his old haunts in a muscle car as well as tender montages of Bruce and Faye playing with her daughter at the boardwalk Unfortunately though Cooper can t escape certain hackneyed biopic tropes in representing the songwriting which are almost impossible to avoid Bruce ruminates over Flannery O Connor stories and Terrence Malick s Badlands which he happens upon while channel surfing one night He goes down a rabbit hole of news stories about Charles Starkweather the spree killer who inspired the film He catches a screening of Night of the Hunter reminiscing about his father taking him to see the film in the middle of the school day Out of this muck of memory and fiction and real-life horror emerge the songs of Nebraska recorded in his bedroom with a -track recorder procured by his guitar tech Mike Batlan Paul Walter Hauser mixed down through an Echoplex and a water-damaged boom box This part of Deliver Me From Nowhere shines especially the catnip for audio nerds as Springsteen synthesizes his own memories with something dark and distinctly American to produce Nebraska a distorted atmospheric cassette tape that he insists on reproducing exactly as is much to the confusion and chagrin of his engineer Chuck Plotkin Marc Maron and long-suffering but ever-devoted manager Jon Landau Jeremy Strong While a thoughtful exploration of the creative process Deliver Me From Nowhere loses its way toward the end meandering aimlessly into a depressive period of Springsteen s and it never quite regains its footing Cooper explicitly denies the big soaring moments delivering emotional highs in the form of a backstage hug or the E-Street Band running through a glorious Born to Run in the studio The film is a more quiet wintry contemplation and tortured soul-searching If not entirely prosperous it s still a fascinating take on how we put rock stars on screen and a valiant attempt to understand how they make the music that moves us Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere contains thematic material specific sexuality strong language and smoking SPRINGSTEEN DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE Rated PG- At the AMC Boston Common Causeway South Bay Center Alamo Drafthouse Seaport Landmark Kendall Square and suburban theaters Grade C
