My wife and I watched Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere recently. It was not what we expected.
Bohemian Rhapsody. Rocketman. I guess it was these two recent films about rock stars that set my expectations. But we can go back to Walk the Line (Johnny Cash), What’s Love Got to Do with It (Tina Turner), La Bamba (Ritchie Valens), The Buddy Holly Story, Ray (Ray Charles) or any number of other films about musicians to see the model of the biopic.
Start with a scene of the subject in their prime, most iconic moment. Add scenes from childhood (okay, Deliver Me has that) establishing their relationship with their family. A sequence of their start in the music business. Scenes showing how they met members of their band, manager, other important people in their career.
Nope.
Scenes of their early successes that launched them to stardom.
Nope.
Then their struggle against their own demons, their dark side that derails their career temporarily, and—usually—their redemption, when they rise above their troubles and sail into a calm sea of enduring fame and adoration.
Or flame out, destroyed by the very dream they’d been chasing, like Ray, Ritchie Valens and Buddy Holly.
And most important: concert scenes of the title character’s biggest, most popular songs performed in immense arenas to throngs of wild fans.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere has none of those.
Yes, there are scenes from his childhood, his alcoholic father and long-suffering mother. As for song performances, there’s about 10 seconds of the end of Born to Run at the beginning, then a couple of scenes of Springsteen playing old rock’n’roll tunes with friends at a bar called the Stone Pony. There are snippets of various recordings of the songs from Nebraska and a rocking studio session recording Born in the USA—a scene that lasts less than a minute.
The story
Other than that, most of the movie focuses on a year in Springsteen’s life, from the end of his six-month tour supporting The River double album, up to the release of his sixth album, Nebraska. It makes for a slow story, yet a deep and captivating portrayal of an artist exploring the darkest areas of his mind.
The film focuses on Springsteen’s artistic as well as psychological struggles. We can see how hard he worked to get the songs for that album just right, to capture genuinely the sound as he heard it in his mind.
There was something deeper driving that effort and that difficulty. That same current also affected his personal relationships with his girlfriend at the time (Faye), his manager Jon Landau and … well, that’s about all the film shows us in any depth.
There are short scenes that show how frustrated his bandmates and recording technicians become. But no one ever loses their temper—except for Bruce Springsteen. Jon Landau, his producer and manager, seems most deeply affected by Springsteen’s mental condition, and tries to explain it to his wife.
His girlfriend Faye Romano (real? Fictional?) sums it up as “you’re terrified.” Afraid of losing touch with what he knew, what he grew up with. Landau, in a separate scene, says that Springsteen is also afraid of what he would become as his success and fame grow.
The main takeaway: Bruce Springsteen has really good friends.
Manager/producer Jon Landau fights the record label corporation for to support Springsteen’s vision. His recording engineer, Jimmy Lovine (who apparently played himself in the film), while expressing frustration, eventually brings Bruce’s home-recorded tracks to a many named Dennis King, who uses old recording equipment to cut the music onto vinyl. This, apparently, gets close to Bruce’s intentions.
In the first third or so of the story, Bruce’s friend Matty drives him to his new, rented bungalow in New Jersey. Later, he drives the Boss across the U.S. from New Jersey via El Paso, Texas, to California.
Even Faye wishes Bruce teary good wishes when he breaks up with her without being able to tell her why.
Is it worth seeing?
Not if you’re looking for a biography of Bruce Springsteen. There are a number of books that are better sources of that kind of information.
Not if you want to see the Boss and the E Street Band performing their hits on stage. There are plenty of DVDs for that. If you’re reading this blog, I’m sure that you can find a DVD player somewhere. Probably in your basement.
But if you want to see an interesting and moving film, then yes, it’s worth your fifteen bucks.