Tom Dunne: Ignore the critics - the Springsteen film is well worth seeing
Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere.
The new Bruce Springsteen movie – I really wouldn’t call it a biopic – is dividing fans and reviewers alike. didn’t so much divide me as floor me. I wasn’t expecting the emotional impact. But this is Bruce’s darkest hour. I should have seen it coming.
Nebraska was always an outlier. Sandwiched between the world conquering epics of and its lo-fi, brooding melancholy was never going to be to everyone’s taste. But those who loved it are adamant: It is Bruce’s artistic masterpiece.
How did it come to be? In September 1981 Bruce was on top of the world. tour had been a triumph. had gone top ten even though Bruce was vehemently no singles artist. His earlier management issues had been resolved. The world was his oyster.
As the E Street Band took a break, he rented a house in New Jersey and set about writing on a simple Teac 144 Four Track recording studio. He was reading Flannery O’Connor, watching Terrence Malick’s unsettling serial killer film and listening to punk band Suicide.
And then the darkness came. He started driving out past his old family home at nighttime, now abandoned and desolate. It is the ghosts in that house – and specifically his relationship with his abusive father- that lie at the heart of this film, the album and Warren Zanes’ 2023 book.
Zanes was a member of US band The Del Fuego’s. In 1985 Bruce had come back to their dressing room to tell them how much he loved them. They developed a bond and when Zanes took a PhD in Visual and Cultural studies and with access to Bruce, he drew back the curtain on Nebraska’s origins.
It’s a story that works on many levels. There is Bruce dealing with the songs as they come to him, his manager dealing with both a client who is clearly in some trouble and a record company who don’t like what they hear. But above all else it is Bruce dealing with his past and the emotional damage it has wrought upon him.
Jeremy Allen White is sensational, not so much as a young Springsteen – although he is great there too- but more as a man scarred by his past. A man who wants to move on, find love and have a family but knows that the damage done is stopping him in his tracks.
It’s a recurring theme in Bruce’s songs: being the best man you can be. And when he fears that past wounds will stop him from becoming that it plays out in his songs. They are bleak, quiet tales of ordinary and often desperate Americans, murderers, outlaws, the unemployed, the disillusioned.
Jeremy Strong — Kendall Roy from Succession — is superb as his manager, Jon Landau. The man who said “I have seen the future of rock and roll, and its name is Bruce Springsteen” is the kind of friend/confidante we would all love in our corner. That relationship, one of the most important in music, is beautifully, sensitively captured.
Recognising the demos as the work of someone with PTSD he acts to both support Bruce and tell the record company that this is the album they will be releasing. And yes: no singles, no videos, no press, and no Bruce on the sleeve either. Magnificent!
Then there is Stephen Graham as Bruce’s dad. He doesn’t speak much, but with Graham he doesn’t need to. He radiates violent unhappiness from every pore. You sense his frustration, his disappointment, his brooding anger. He could explode at any moment. But this damaged man is Bruce’s dad. And we all love our dads.
It is that dynamic that is at the real heart of this film. And if you are one of those who may have grown up with a dad of that era, where shows of emotion or even simple conversation was non-existent, then you too may find that packs a powerful punch.
The music, naturally, is stunning. The in-studio version of is jaw-dropping. As Jon Landau says, “That song and nine duds and you’ve still got a great album!”
This is a wonderful film, but not maybe for the reasons Bruce fans might be expecting. Like itself, it is deceptive. It is the film that bruised masterpiece, has always deserved.
