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| Scott Cooper: Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere (US 2025) with Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen. |
Made possible by a donation from Roger Durling
David Fear (TFF 2025): "In 1981, Bruce Springsteen found himself at a crossroads. Having just finished the biggest tour of his career, should he go back into the studio? Or lay low and recharge his batteries alone at home? While pondering his next move, he began to mess around with an acoustic guitar and a 4-track machine. The result, Nebraska, a spare album of American gothic storytelling, is now considered one of his best albums, even though he had to fight to get it released. Scott Cooper (BLACK MASS, HOSTILES) dives deep into this pivotal moment in the Boss’s life, giving us a gritty portrait of an artist as a blue-collar seeker, ready to follow his creative impulses to the ends of the Earth, even if it means tanking his career and looking into his dark past. The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen as a troubled soul chasing healing and truth; Jeremy Strong plays Bruce’s manager-slash-guardian angel Jon Landau." –DF (U.S., 2025, 112m) In person: Scott Cooper, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong - surprise guests: Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau
Viewed at Palm, Telluride Film Festival, 30 Aug 2025
AA: In the morning I saw Blue Moon by Richard Linklater, with Ethan Hawke in a brilliant performance as Lorenz Hart during an evening of terminal humiliation. My day of films about great musicians continues with Scott Cooper's Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere focusing on a profound career crisis of Bruce Springsteen.
Springsteen has already released Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River when he suffered a serious case of depression and something close to a mental breakdown.
Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White) faces the ghosts of his past - a broken home, an alcoholic father (Stephen Graham), a childhood under the shadow of domestic violence against Bruce's loving mother (Gaby Hoffmann). He dates a nice woman who works at a cafeteria (Odessa Young).
Springsteen suffers from the discrepancy of being a working class artist and a big star drawn to an elite lifestyle, just like Merle Haggard in Ethan Hawke's Highway 99 A Double Album. This is a hard dilemma in art and life.
My favourite moment is the final confrontation of Bruce with the character played by Odessa Young. She defies Bruce to confront himself and stop running away from himself. If he does not do that, he can never meet the significant other.
The album Nebraska, initially rejected by Columbia, is a key part of that. Inspired by Terrence Malick's Badlands, about parricide and a subsequent killing spree, Bruce confronts his demons challenging received notions of pop music.
Deliver Me from Nowhere is a deeply moving film about depression and redemption.
The screening was followed by an unforgettable Q & A with Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau as surprise guests. Jon Landau, Bruce's manager, had seen the musician perform in 1974 and written that he "saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen". They still work together, in one of the great partnerships in culture.
Landau saw in Springsteen two things: humility and swagger. Perfectly captured by Jeremy Allen White and Scott Cooper in their powerful film.
Next to the great Springsteen soundtrack - with Jeremy Allen White himself singing with true conviction - an important choice is "The Last Mile of the Way", a gospel song written and composed by Sam Cooke, performed by Sam Cooke and The Soul Stirrers in 1955.
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An excellent review by Steve Pond:
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