The black dog of depression can hit anyone, regardless of how fabulous their life may be/seem. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere examines the effects of depression on singer/songwriter Bruce Springsteen and those around him during the development of his 1982 album Nebraska, just as he’s on the cusp of global stardom.

Produced with the consent of Springsteen – he was often on set – Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere stars Jeremy Allen White (The Bear, also check out his Calvin Klein underwear ads) as Springsteen. He has a strong supporting cast, including Stephen Graham as his father, Jeremy Strong (Succession) as Jon Landau, his manager, Odessa Young as a love interest and a voice-only cameo by Jimmy Iovine playing himself.

We begin in Freehold, New Jersey, in 1957, in black and white, where the eight-year-old Bruce Springsteen (a brilliant Matthew Anthony Pellicano Jr.) is sent to get his drunk father out of a bar. Home life involves a lot of shouting and fighting between his blue-collar parents, upsetting the poor kid. Fast forward to Cincinnati in 1981, and the now very successful 32-year-old Springsteen plays Born to Run with his E Street Band as an encore to a sold-out stadium audience. Post-gig Springsteen manages to avoid people and heads back home to his beautiful mid-Century home in New Jersey. His transition into wealth has been rapid and everyone wants a slice of the pie, particularly his record company, who want an album with singles to follow up on the huge success of 1980’s The River. He’s in no rush to please anyone, though, and for the time being is happy playing smaller local gigs at Ashbury Park’s The Stone Pony, hanging out alone at home, and casually dating a cute young mother, Faye (Odessa Young) whom he met outside one of his gigs.

Springsteen feels his next step musically should be an album with no singles, no press and no tour. He wants the acoustic album to speak for itself, to speak his mind without distractions. He doesn’t even want his face on the album cover. He also wants to produce the album at home on a four-track-recorder without an engineer or producer. His very patient manager Jon communicates this to the record company, with a predictable negative reaction. Nevertheless, they don’t want to upset Springsteen so they go along with the idea, appeasing his very emotional state – enhanced by various flashbacks to his childhood and his relationship with his parents.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is based on Warren Zane’s 2023 book of the same title as well as Springsteen’s own autobiography Born To Run. Director Scott Cooper has cleverly avoided the usual music biopic pitfalls by creating a film that is essentially a study of mental health issues, and their inter-generational effects. Cliché is also avoided by only focusing on one year of Springsteen’s life. Beautiful cinematography captures the cool early 1980s interiors of his home, record company offices etc. The cinematography has a welcome feel of Saturday Night Fever rawness. 1980s cultural references to Walter Yetnikoff, Jimmy Iovine, Stevie Nicks and Jann Wenner enhace the authenticity. Springsteen is alone a lot, writing lyrics, listening to Suicide, living a simple life just being. The lack of constant dialogue with the focus instead on mood, is confident and refreshing. Jeremy Allen White delivers a stellar performance which includes singing and playing guitar himself, a devotion to his art that didn’t even need Springsteen’s on-set guidance. The film is factually true except that the character of Faye represents various girlfriends, not one woman. Springsteen’s relationship with his parents is given apt attention, that many will connect to. It’s an excellent movie, including the brutal intermittent black and white flashbacks to the 1950s, that will introduce a large new audience to the seminal album Nebraska.

10/10