Review: ‘Springsteen’ is more character study than biopic

Writer-director Scott Cooper doesn’t want to make a music biopic. At least not the kind of music biopic you expect. Instead, in “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” he offers a character study as biopic, riding a similar groove as his Oscar-winning 2009 directorial debut “Crazy Heart.”

“Deliver Me” doesn’t try to tell the entire life story of New Jersey’s beloved rock bard, Bruce “The Boss” Springsteen. In fact, it doesn’t even really cover his biggest hits.

Instead, “Deliver Me,” which Cooper based on the Warren Zanes book of the same name, focuses on a contemplative period in Springsteen’s life and career, a time when the musician dug deep to exorcise his own demons, producing the songs for his 1982 acoustic album “Nebraska.”

“The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White hunches into leather jackets and flannels, dark curls coquettishly kissing his brow, in order to embody Springsteen. Like most musical biopics these days, the audience has to enter into an agreement with the film, suspending disbelief. Does White disappear into the role? Does he look exactly like Springsteen? No. But he’s the symbol of Springsteen here, and he captures the star’s flinty gaze and rock ‘n’ roll rasp while performing the songs himself, and brings his own intense soulfulness to the role.

Using Zane’s book, Cooper wants to present a study of the creative process, and how isolating, transporting and transformative it can be to tear out your soul, spill your guts and express something so personal that it becomes universal, as Springsteen did with “Nebraska.”

Holed up at a rental home in Colts Neck, N.J., in late 1981, Springsteen has just finished a tour and is trying to readjust to the quiet, which is just too loud. He tries to take the edge off with nights at his hometown rock club, the Stone Pony, and a relationship with a fan, Faye (Odessa Young). But his past haunts him, especially his childhood with an alcoholic, emotionally neglectful father (Stephen Graham) and loving but turbulent mother (Gabby Hoffman).

Cooper visualizes Springsteen’s emotional and creative churn through black-and-white childhood flashbacks, and scenes of him driving around his old haunts in a muscle car, as well as tender montages of Bruce and Faye playing with her daughter at the boardwalk.

Springsteen ruminates over Flannery O’Connor stories and Terrence Malick’s “Badlands,” which he happens upon while channel surfing one night. He goes down a rabbit hole of news stories about Charles Starkweather, the spree killer who inspired the film. He catches a screening of “Night of the Hunter,” reminiscing about his father taking him to see the film in the middle of the school day.

Out of this muck of memory and fiction and real-life horror emerge the songs of “Nebraska,” recorded in his bedroom with a four-track recorder procured by his guitar tech Mike Batlan (Paul Walter Hauser), mixed down through an Echoplex and a water-damaged boom box.

This part of “Deliver Me” shines, especially the catnip for audio nerds, as Springsteen synthesizes his own memories with something dark and distinctly American to produce “Nebraska,” a distorted, atmospheric cassette tape that he insists on reproducing exactly as is, much to the confusion and chagrin of his engineer Chuck Plotkin (Marc Maron) and long-suffering but ever-devoted manager, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong).

Half the movie belongs to Landau, as one of the unsung heroes of this album. The film is in part a tribute to those people who support artists and their vision but don’t necessarily get the glory.

Cooper takes the time to illustrate how Landau protects Springsteen’s space to create and later protects his art, ensuring it’s released the way he wants, despite the protestations of record executives.

While a thoughtful exploration of the creative process, “Deliver Me” loses its way toward the end, meandering aimlessly into a depressive period of Springsteen’s, and it never quite regains its footing.

Cooper explicitly denies the big, soaring moments, delivering emotional highs in the form of a backstage hug, or the E-Street Band running through a glorious “Born to Run” in the studio.

The film is a more quiet, wintry contemplation and tortured soul-searching. If not entirely successful, it’s still a fascinating take on how we put rock stars on screen, and a valiant attempt to understand how they make the music that moves us.

2½ stars out of 4

Rated: PG-13 for thematic material, some sexuality and strong language.