Spoiler Warning: Gives summary of events from the movie
Deliver Me from Nowhere is a musical biopic that focuses not on the entire career of Bruce Springsteen, but mainly on the creation of his record Nebraska. It goes in depth into Springsteen’s mental health struggles, stemming from his somewhat troubled childhood, and how the record captures his deep, raw emotion. While many, including myself, expected a film highlighting Springsteen’s spectacular concerts and career highlights, Deliver Me from Nowhere is beautifully different.
Jeremy Allen White was chosen to play Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me from Nowhere, a part that required exceptional musical and acting talent. He embodied the role, and went beyond, displaying a performance filled with emotional rawness and musicality. His performance was significantly evocative—perfectly capturing the dark, depressive hole that Springsteen found himself in while writing Nebraska. From the drastic highs and lows Bruce endured throughout the film, he showed it with an intimacy that brought tears to my eyes.
Beyond the touching emotions, White had never sung or played guitar before he was chosen for this role, yet his musical performance was markedly spectacular. White emulated Springsteen’s voice perfectly, specifically in songs such as “I’m On Fire” and “Atlantic City.”
The movie began with a scene of childhood trauma, and then quickly transitioned to Springsteen, often dubbed “The Boss,” in concert during his 1980 The River Tour. It then displayed his life off-tour, illustrating Bruce’s struggle with this harsh transition marked by stark loneliness and childhood-rooted PTSD episodes. While many criticized the movie for being slow moving and dark, these elements, in my opinion, added layers of emotion to the movie that only made it more unique. I often found myself wondering why certain scenes were added, later to understand the emotion that it brought and how it added to the overall storyline.
Mainly due to the success of his record and tour, Bruce’s fans and record labels eagerly awaited his next musical release. Bruce, however, was not interested in his success; he and his manager Jon Landau, played incredibly by Jeremy Strong, cared more about writing music that comes naturally and “makes sense.” A scene portrayed Bruce alone in his car when his hit song “Hungry Heart” began playing on the radio, and Bruce shut it off in disgust. In this dark time, he didn’t resonate with his classic anthemic: rock and roll songs. However, songs like these were what Bruce was famous for, and many movie critics wanted more of them in the film.
For me, the movie’s advertising wasn’t fully transparent about the movie’s dark nature throughout; the cover featured Bruce in concert, possibly providing a misleading notion of the movie. Still, while before I struggled to understand what contributed to the sudden change of Bruce’s music from album to album, this portrayal illuminated for me the factors that went into his musical decisions.
Bruce began recording songs in his bedroom by himself with a low quality recording system, and decided to release those tracks ultimately unedited; this threw his label into a frenzy. Abruptly and unexpectedly, Bruce decided to move to Los Angeles. After a long road trip, Bruce found himself in the worst mental shape of his life. He called Landau, who forced him to get professional mental health help. Here, many critics noted that context was lacking in certain areas of the film, even though, in my view, it was understandable.
This scene led to a particularly tender post-concert scene taking place six months later, in which Bruce and his father had a conversation that presented a sense of love and support that hadn’t been shown before. Finally, the movie concluded with the ending of this conversation, and the epilogue described Bruce’s continuing struggle with depression over the course of his career with references to how he combatted the illness. The strategic decision to write this in the epilogue, rather than reveal it in another scene, added clarity in a way that no other scene could have achieved. For me, it was the perfect complete ending.
Part of what made this film so moving and eye-opening were the intricacies of family ties and the lasting impact of childhood trauma on Bruce. His courage and willingness to be open about his mental health struggles led to a movie that shifted my perspective on even my relationship with my own father and the way I think about my own feelings.
Bruce Springsteen has been a longtime idol of mine. And Deliver Me from Nowhere expresses how mental health struggles affect even those we might not expect, such as a beloved rockstar on the cusp of becoming a global megastar. Bruce takes the courage to be fully authentic, showing viewers his humanity, and for that I thank him.
