There’s a revealing moment in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, written and directed by Scott Cooper, in which a young Bruce Springsteen (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) is pitched a project to star in a new film called Born in the USA. His agent, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), tells Bruce the script is by Paul Schrader, the “guy who wrote Taxi Driver.” Schrader, of course, also co-wrote Raging Bull about volatile boxer Jake LaMotta. Raging Bull was a biopic as dark as it gets; a stark exploration of masculinity, obsession and rage. It pulled no punches about LaMotta and his fatal flaw: an instinct for violence that won fights but ruined his life.

In real life, Springsteen, who was no actor, turned down Schrader’s script. But he did end up writing a song named after it. Whether Cooper chose to include this event to align his film spiritually with Raging Bull is unclear, but if he did, he really shouldn’t have.

Set in December 1981, Deliver Me from Nowhere depicts Springsteen, five albums in, recoiling from global fame and retreating to his hometown of Colts Neck, New Jersey. Here, he’ll write and record the ultimately seminal folk album Nebraska. The record label is baying for another smash hit, but Springsteen turns inwards, immersing himself in the writing of Flannery O’Connor, the music of Suicide, and Terence Malick’s Badlands. In a cavernous farmhouse, he lays his soul bare onto a TEAC four-track. He also, according to the film, dates waitress Faye (Odessa Young). Faye is beautiful and real, but Bruce can’t open his heart to love until he confronts his past; namely his abusive, alcoholic father (Adolescence’s Stephen Graham).

While not by any means the world’s biggest Springsteen fan, I’m aware that Nebraska holds a special place in the heart of his fans, representing not only The Boss’s defiance to the studio system, but also his most passionate articulation of his inner world. It’s ironic then, that Cooper’s film is such a mainstream studio effort, taking no risks, and revealing nothing about Springsteen’s process or his demons. It’s not the actors’ faults. White and Strong deliver brave performances, but they’re hamstrung by the clunkiest script of the year, full to the brim of blue-collar cliché, obscene exposition and fawning adulation. This is the opposite of show don’t tell, and as an audience, we’re left with nothing to figure out on our own.

It doesn’t help that just not that much happens in Nowhere. It’s likely that the 2023 book of the same name by Warren Zanes was better able to capture the interiority of art, of Springsteen’s process, of the parasitic exchange of music and trauma. But you can’t show Springsteen reading a book in a film, so when nothing much happens, our focus turns to  dialogue. Why can’t The Boss accept himself as a man? Director and screenwriter Cooper answers the question by throwing Bruce and his nondescript rust-belt buddy into a garage to discuss his emotions while tinkering with an old Chevy. Or why can’t Bruce deliver the record the studio execs want? Well, Strong just basically tells us all the reasons in an absurd monologue purportedly directed at other characters, but really straight down the barrel.

But of course, there is the music. It’s good throughout the film. And for the criminally few sequences in which White is permitted to let his imitation of Springsteen live large, we’re reminded just how big these songs sounded. A highlight sees Bruce and the E-Street Band laying down “Born in the U.S.A.” in the studio, and it’s actually great. Great to see musicians playing music. Great to see a depiction of guitarist Steven Van Zandt (who in real life, would go on to play Silvio in The Sopranos). When Nowhere stops shouting at us about why this is all so important, and just shows us, it actually works.

But back to Raging Bull. Yes, LaMotta was objectively a shit compared to The Boss. He was, after all, a fighter destroying people for a living. But Schrader and Scorsese didn’t shy away from the darkness. In the end, there was a redemptive arc, but not without costs. We don’t learn anything about Springsteen in Deliver Me from Nowhere that gets us to that cathartic point. He remains a sanguine, unblemished figure. So, if you want to know the real meaning behind Nebraska, I’d suggest: just listen to the goddamn 41-minute record.

 

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere opened yesterday in cinemas.