Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (2025) catches the Boss in between albums, fresh from a successful tour and on the verge of making history with his next project. The Bruce Springsteen biopic, based on Warren Zanes’s book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, doesn’t break new ground in terms of its plotting. But the movie is unusual in that it portrays a music icon at a low point, haunted by his past and confused about his direction.
The downbeat, brooding tone didn’t exactly endear the movie to American viewers when it was released in October. Oscar voters too gave Deliver Me from Nowhere a pass despite Jeremy Allen White’s admirably internalised performance.
Springsteen fans looking for the hits will find them only in snatches. What the biopic does well is deliver a profile of Springsteen at a particular point in his life, which helps make sense of the songs he was writing in the early 1980s.
The film, which is out on JioHotstar, begins with a flashback to Springsteen’s troubled childhood, chiefly because of his alcoholic father Douglas (Stephen Graham). As an adult, Springsteen struggles to reconcile his newfound popularity with memories of Douglas’s violent behaviour.
Among the key characters is Springsteen’s loyal manager and music producer Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), who helps Springsteen navigate the pressures of fame, self-doubt and depression. Springsteen is being pressurised to go back into a studio and churn out new tunes. But he would rather hang out with his lover Faye (Odessa Young), read novels or watch films. An offer to act in a film written by Paul Schrader – initially titled Born in the USA – sets Springsteen on something of a collision course with his backers.
The film handles the quiet moments amidst the rush of stardom well, giving White several solid scenes. He’s compelling on the stage too as he superbly depicts Springsteen’s energetic body language. Deliver Me from Nowhere is a portrait of an artist as a serious man, introspective and introverted even, trying to make sense of his past and his present. It isn’t flashy or upbeat, but that’s the whole point.
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