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If you’ve seen any trailers for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, you have every right to expect a high-octane biopic of the legendary New Jersey rocker. Especially because the majority of them boast long snippets of a “Born to Run” performance at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, where Jeremy Allen White leans into the Boss’s on-stage hallmarks: his exhausted, screaming voice, crouched stance, and sweat-soaked hair. Like one of his sold-out concerts, it’s loud, exciting, and alive, capturing him at the height of his powers.
But those adrenalized teasers belie Scott Cooper’s new movie, which opts out of offering a comprehensive biography set to career-spanning karaoke, and instead documents a much quieter but pivotal moment in its subject’s life. Specifically, it follows the contours of Warren Zane’s eponymous book, telling the creation story of Springsteen’s unplugged 1982 album Nebraska. In the afterglow of his hugely successful album tour for The River, Springsteen retreats to his empty Colts Neck, N.J., home and confronts the demons of his past, composing a series of stripped-down, introspective folk songs (recorded in his bedroom on a four-track player) that channel his newfound isolation and burgeoning depression.
Now considered one of Springsteen’s most important albums, Nebraska initially played as a direct affront to Columbia Records label executives, who were eager for him to continue churning out mainstream radio anthems. They didn’t know how to market his haunting poetry or his distorted music, which crackled and echoed without a producer’s touch, nor did he have any desire to promote it himself. (Despite the label execs’ misgivings, Nebraska would outperform expectations and become a treasured classic.) As the movie details in two distinct timelines, the album evokes all of Springsteen’s inner turmoil and complicated relationships—with himself, his father, his romantic interests, and his loyal manager—and packages…
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