The music biopic genre is a genre that has become so formulaic that it has become a parody of itself. The artist unexpected rise to stardom. The artist riding high on the wave of fame. Their eventual fall into drugs and alcohol that nearly derails everything. Then the film ends with an emotional concert as the artist pulls themselves out of the grips of addiction and has life summaries right before the end credits. The genre has been seen as a bit of an Oscar villain over the past decade due to its formulaic structure and the lack of depth with its storytelling. Yet, Hollywood continues to pump one out every year. This year, Bruce Springsteen gets the biopic treatment with Springsteen: Deliver me from Nowhere. And all I have to say is that in its desperation to not fall into the traps of the music biopic genre, it falls right into its clutches.
Bruce Springsteen (Jeremy Allen White), a young musician, is on the cusp of global stardom. After a record breaking sold-out tour he is pressured by studio executives to put out a new album in a few months. However, the exhaustion of the recent tour and his new found stardom begin to weigh down on him. As the ghost of his past begins to haunt him and his melancholy tightens the noose, he begins spiraling into depression as he records the album Nebraska.
From the opening scene, it is clear that Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere wants to sidestep the usual pitfalls of the music biopic genre. Rather than charting Bruce’s entire career, the film zeroes on a single year of Bruce’s life, him writing the album Nebraska. Within that narrow scope, you’d expect an intimate character study as it would be a raw look at Springsteen wrestling with his depression. However, Deliver me from Nowhere never gets there as it settles into the same polished, arm’s-length storytelling that keeps most music biopics from feeling alive.
The film’s exploration of Bruce’s battle with depression is so melodramatic that I felt my eyes rolling to the back of my head. We get all the familiar beats: Bruce staring off sadly in his empty house, shutting out the people who care about him, obsessing over Nebraska until it consumes him. Bruce looks back on his childhood as he tries to make sense of his melancholy and a worried manager, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) tries to make sense of what is happening to Bruce. It checks all of the boxes of a “depression character study”, but Deliver Me From Nowhere feels afraid of diving into the terrifying reality of depression. We don’t see the destructive wake that depression can bring. There is no sense of danger and visceral violence. All we see is Jeremy Allen White looking miserable for two hours straight. So when Bruce finally breaks down as he begins to reconcile his past, it lands with a thud as I still don’t know who this man is.
On one hand, I respect Deliver Me From Nowhere for at least trying to dodge the usual music biopic cliches and deliver something more personal and intimate as it studies Bruce Springsteen. However, its act of avoidance ends up being its own downfall. The film never taps into the raw, intimate energy this story demands. It left an oddly hollow and polished to the point of sterility taste in my mouth as it too was afraid of its own darkness. And despite solid work from Jeremy Allen White and Jeremy Strong, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere will just be another failed Oscar-bait biopic.
My Rating: C
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