Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere - The Untold and Demystified Myth of Bruce in Scott Cooper's Film

We still have in our eyes (and ears) A Complete Unknown, in which Chalamet played Bob Dylan in 1961 and his ascent to global rock troubadour, and now cinema once again embraces a legendary moment of another great figure, Bruce Springsteen. We are in Lyon, at the 17th Lumière Film Festival, the event conceived and desired by Thierry Frémaux, the historic mastermind of the Cannes Film Festival, where everything seems magical, makes a difference, where the origins and future of cinema coexist, intertwine, offering experiences, emotions, and a desire to rediscover.

Directing Springsteen - Deliver Me from Nowhere (to be released in theaters on October 23 by The Walt Disney Company Italia, ed.) is Scott Cooper, among the best directors at encouraging and supporting his actors to bring out the best in them. He did it already in his directorial debut with Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, and Bridges won the Oscar for Best Actor. Now at the center of this new work, we have an equally surprising performer, Jeremy Allen White, the symbolic face of The Bear series, of Calvin Klein advertising campaigns, also capable of unexpected roles (as in Babak Jalali's Fremont), but now ready to embody a unique character.

Both arrive in Lyon after their stop in Rome: Cooper wears a T-shirt celebrating Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas, he is moved, and so is White; they are overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the Hangar Room at the Institute Lumière. This is the first film to be effectively approved by Springsteen himself, as the director recounts, “a great challenge and gamble,” which The Boss followed at every stage, often appearing on set to see the evolution of his own story and an important temporal moment, detaching himself from concerts. More than a specific portrait, a moment of emotional and personal turning point, here there is above all the human being.

A Turning Point: Bruce Springsteen's Autumn of 1981

It is the autumn of 1981. Springsteen is 31 years old, and already an idolized artist, long at his peak, having just concluded a triumphant tour for his latest album, "The River". The Columbia Records executives, however, are eager to see him return immediately to the studio to record further hits, but this is not his intention at all. Tired, anxious, perhaps exhausted, he seeks refuge (and help) in the presence of his old friends, wishing to recharge his creativity (and more) in that corner of New Jersey where he was born, raised, and knows so well. He then retreats to a small house in Colts Neck, a village near his hometown of Freehold (also in New Jersey), to try and truly fight for the first time some never-overcome demons from his past.

Indeed, because the film, based on the book written by Warren Zanes, and inspired by Springsteen's 2016 memoir, “Deliver Me from Nowhere,” delves into a crucial phase of his existence, a reckoning up to that point, but also one that had negatively affected him. A look inward, which would then generate his sixth album, one of his best, Nebraska, released in 1982 without any tour, without any press meetings, and recorded in his own way.

Nebraska: The Birth of a Masterpiece from Personal Pain

Tracks within it are intense and searching, an acoustic album with folk sounds, in which different inspirations emerge: workers, outlaws (like Martin Sheen in Terrence Malick's Badlands), outsiders, serial killers like Charles Starkweather and Carl Fugate, Flannery O'Connor's TV series, generating songs like "Nebraska" itself, "My Father's House", "Atlantic City", "Highway Patrolman", "Johnny 99".

To arrive at the final composition, Springsteen first comes to terms with himself, with the contradictory (and often unresolved) relationship with his father Doug, an alcoholic, unaffectionate, violent man (played by Stephen Graham) who would in many ways mark his growth. It's a part of the story that Cooper presents to us in black and white:
flashbacks constructed in a present-day perspective, narrating the need to confront that conflict and pain, even as a child.

The lacerating fear of not being good enough shows us an adult Springsteen in search of balance and calm. One of the few to understand him, a kind of acquired father figure, is his beloved manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, after Succession and The Apprentice, is a confirmation), capable of making him reason between commercial expectations, rejection, and the necessity to stop.

But in the meantime, his mental health collapses along with his relationship with the waitress Faye (how good Odessa Young is!), the only composite and little-explained character in his life (who came before his wife Patty Scialfa, whom he married in 1991, ed.), very useful to the film's narrative, to decipher themes regarding disappearance, the need for help, the inability (also) to give himself to love, the fall into a form of depression, and rebirth through music.