If you’ve ever wanted to peer deep inside Bruce Springsteen’s soul, his album Nebraska would be a good place to start. Nebraska is a stripped-down album written while Springsteen was struggling with his first huge dose of fame and also with the trauma of his childhood. The film Deliver Me From Nowhere focuses on the few years in the early 1980s as Springsteen was wrestling with these things and his own proclivity to depression. Haunted by a fraught childhood with a possibly manic father and disturbed by the level of fame he had already achieved, the artist finds solace and shelter in writing Nebraska in his own way and his own time, despite the pressure from the record label to come out with something cheerier and more commercial.
If you think all that sounds a bit sad, you would be right.
Sad, yes; a little dark, maybe. But above the gloomy skies is a breakthrough, and somehow the viewer can sense that this period of deep introspection and even seclusion has a greater purpose. What will this rock star/regular-guy wannabe discover at the end of this journey of introspection and songwriting? Will he understand himself better?
There’s a great scene in the movie when Springsteen buys his first new car, and the salesman says, “I know who you are.” From the depths of his genuine heart, the singer replies, “That would make one of us.” With his past pulling at him and his future looking way too bright for a guy who prefers a simple life, Springsteen must carve out who he is and what it is he wants from life and music.
Jeremy Allen White drew me in with the vulnerability of his portrayal. You can sense Springsteen’s inherent goodness and kindness in his interactions with girlfriend Faye (Odessa Young), apparently a composite of the star’s real-life girlfriends during this period, and also his troubled father. In flashbacks we see little Bruce trying to make sense of his father’s dark, erratic moods. White is believable as that sensitive little boy, all grown up but still floundering to find meaning in his life.
Springsteen has expressed finding faith in real life, though that is absent from this movie. Deliver Me From Nowhere is a portrait of the artist as a young man, one with wounds and questions still searching for somewhere he can call home. Rated PG-13 for brief sexual content with no nudity and some strong language. (Amazon Prime, Apple TV +, and other streaming platforms)