While fascinating in its exploration of the quiet, intimate moments of artistic reflection and internal doubt, Deliver Me from Nowhere lacks emotional resonance, leaving us with a hollow feeling as the credits roll.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere should be an award season darling. It features an exemplary cast led by Jeremy Allen White, who brings a tortured Springsteen to life with a remarkable performance. Add Odessa Young, Stephen Graham, Jeremy Strong and the birth of Bruce Springsteen’s seminal 1982 album Nebraska, and you should have a recipe for success and more than a few award season nods. Yet Scott Cooper’s biopic, based on Warren Zane’s book and Springsteen’s 2016 memoir, feels strangely void of emotion.
Deliver Me from Nowhere attempts to interrogate a pivotal phase in Springsteen’s life, one we have all faced as we begin to question our experiences growing up and how they shaped the person we are today and the person we want to be. For Bruce, that period of his life led to artistic introspection, as unresolved issues from his past — namely, his volatile relationship with his father (Stephen Graham) and his father’s treatment of his mother — came to the fore. Set in 1981, his elderly father is now vulnerable, and Springsteen slowly realises that the man he once feared has and continues to shape his writing and creative process, despite never having confronted his dad’s behaviours or discussed their impact. Here, Cooper offers us a fascinating exploration of how lived experience shapes artistic endeavour and can, at times, lead to a new creative path driven by the need to heal.
While fascinating in its exploration of the quiet, intimate moments of artistic reflection and internal doubt, Deliver Me from Nowhere lacks emotional resonance, leaving us with a hollow feeling as the credits roll. Rather than encouraging debate about the iron fences men often place around their emotions and memories, and about art’s ability to break through those fences and allow healing to begin, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere erects a wall between the audience and the on-screen performances. There’s a lot to like in this unconventional biopic, but sadly, it keeps the audience at a distance from the man, the artist, and the healing journey he embarks on.
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