Lucas Castillo-West, Contributing Illustrator

“Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” juggles too many plotlines. The film, starring Jeremy Allen White, focuses on the making of Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album, “Nebraska,” the relationship between a father and son and a fictional love affair with a hometown girl. The film explores a different side of Springsteen — not as “The Boss” but as Bruce the Jersey boy struggling to make the darkest and most personal record of his career. But its exploration covers too much ground and not enough depth.

This introspection is explored in the film through vignettes of Springsteen’s childhood. Springsteen’s relationship with his father is a highlight of the film, particularly the elder Springsteen’s struggle with alcoholism and mental illness. The film opens with a flashback — 8-year-old Springsteen going into the bar to get his father to come home — before jumping ahead to 1981 for a triumphant live performance of “Born to Run” with the E Street Band. The black-and-white returns to childhood within the film fuel Springsteen’s creativity when writing “Nebraska.”

On the album’s title track, originally called “Starkweather,” Springsteen writes about a serial killer from Nebraska on death row. During the writing process, he remembers a moment in his childhood when he hit his father with a baseball bat to protect his mother. Springsteen crosses out the “he” and “him” references to the killer and replaces them with “I” and “me.” Springsteen seemingly relates to real-life murderers and writes from their perspective throughout the album as a means of dissecting himself and his relationships. These moments in the film, where viewers see how Springsteen’s mind works, are integral parts to the biopic. 

Unfortunately, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” tells more than it shows. Bruce’s childhood traumas and strained relationship with his father are not centered in the film. It tries to juggle three plotlines at once — including one of a fictitious woman named Faye who was meant to simultaneously represent Springsteen’s relationship with women and his detachment from New Jersey after rising to fame. The inclusion of fictitious Faye would’ve been tolerable if it revealed something deeper about Springsteen’s expression of masculinity.

Our usual image of Springsteen is a macho, rugged working man with an electric guitar strapped across his back. He’s called “The Boss” afterall. However, the Springsteen we see in the movie is not a very tough guy. As a child, he is disinterested in his dad teaching him how to fight. In adulthood, he has commitment issues with Faye and spends his nights listening to music and composing acoustic songs in his bedroom alone. Creating a fictitious love interest has been explored in other biopics, but Faye’s purpose in the film could have been improved to make her more than a shallow genre cliche.

Springsteen’s relationship with his manager Jon Landau, played by Jeremy Strong ’01, is where the movie seems most confined by tropes of the modern musician biopic. As Springsteen’s manager, Landau’s job is to defend “Nebraska” to the record executives. He defends Bruce wanting no singles, no tour and not wanting to appear on the album cover. Before we get to this scene, we see multiple moments of tension between Springsteen and Landau. Landau prefers the electric recordings to Springsteen’s original acoustic recordings and urges him to release them first. Springsteen refuses, shelving the electric tracks for a later release which would eventually become the album “Born in the U.S.A.”

Despite Landau’s lukewarm support, the record executives remain unconvinced of its potential. As a track from the record plays, the record executive says “So are all of the tracks like this?” Landau responds in the affirmative. The record executive then replies, “So we don’t have to listen to this anymore?” The album that is supposed to be the center of the film is made into a punching bag. I don’t deny that a scene like that may have occurred in real life, but Landau’s lackluster defense of “Nebraska” makes audiences unsure of who to side with: Springsteen or the suits. 

If “Nebraska” was to be portrayed in such a way in this film, why not focus on the making of “Born in the U.S.A”?  For a film that only takes place over two years of Springsteen’s life, the overlapping yet shallow plotlines leave it unfocused. The most powerful parts of the film lie in the flashbacks to Springsteen’s traumatic upbringing. They provide insight into his creative process in a way that other parts of the film fail to achieve. However, with a fictional romance subplot and a trite reliance on biopic tropes, the film wound up with more filler than needed.

I find it very brave of Springsteen to talk about his father’s mental health struggles and tie it to his own struggles with depression and loneliness. Those moments were some of the most focused of the film. Allen White’s performance as Springsteen is incredibly believable and raw. If the film was solely about this father-son dynamic, it could have been a much better, possibly groundbreaking biopic.

Many critics who’ve written about the film have asked: “Who is the intended audience?” The real question is: “What does this film want to be?” An exploration of a musician pushing himself to his mental limit? A father and son drama? A lament on the girl that got away? “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” could have been so much more. “Nebraska” is an album worthy of more praise. Springsteen is an artist worthy of a better film.