‘Springsteen’ biopic resonates with monotony, likened to a single note
few years crafting the follow-up to “Born to Run,” so making one sparse, acoustic record didn’t seem like it would be that big of a hurdle. That’s the kind of detail Zanes excelled in capturing in his book, but here it’s all chalked up to generic tension that plays like a parody of an artist wrestling with his muse.
What the film ignores entirely, and what makes the “Nebraska” story so resonant, is that Springsteen didn’t stop being the guy who jumped on top of pianos and slid across stages while scantily clad saxophonists wailed. In between recording sessions for “Nebraska,” he recorded another album’s worth of songs with the band. They would become 1984’s colossally successful “Born in the U.S.A.” He made “Nebraska” in isolation, quietly, while the world outside roared for him to go bigger and flashier, to match the commercial heights he had scaled with “The River.” He was hollowed out by the experience, and “Nebraska” remains one of the most moving documents of an artist grappling with diametrically opposed impulses. That gap, between the solitude demanded by creativity and the cacophony of fame, is where the real story lies. But that dichotomy is seemingly above the pay grade of the assembled screenwriters and producers, who prefer schematic melodrama.
This missing insight would explain why “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” feels like a movie not made with the participation of anyone who has ever attended a Bruce Springsteen concert. The film doesn’t venerate his passion onstage or respect the thrill of an arena chanting “Bruuuuuce” as they await the “Jungleland” sax solo. Instead, it reduces the man to a PBS Biography Special soundtracked by Bullet for My Valentine. It’s a hagiography for people who don’t care about artistry but kinda like “The Boss.”
Given the right approach, a movie about the making of “Nebraska” and its aftermath could be heartrending and enlightening. But “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” plays its one note with all the skill and style of a beginning accordion student squeezing out a flatulent “My Heart Will Go On.” The worst kind of biopic doesn’t defame or disrespect its subject; it merely doesn’t understand them at all. The film takes the iconography of a towering American artist and reduces it to the level of a kid sticking his tongue on a frozen flagpole. Viewing it feels like watching a friend slip away, replaced by an uncanny valley robot who remembers all the right moves but none of the soul. It left me hungering for the nourishment of the man’s music — which, even at its glummest, contains multitudes of joy, defiance and aliveness. And those, finally, are the inescapable elements of the human heart that “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” remains incapable of recognizing.