"Well, that makes one of us."
Far from the typical Hollywood musical biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere homes in on Bruce Springsteen's life and career in the early 1980s, when his first taste of commercial success sees him dealing with the pressures of burgeoning stardom, a lifestyle at odds with his small-town roots and his desire to make his next album a seemingly-uncommercial back-to-basics introspective work. This is a very sensitive, pensive and honest film that deals with the spectre of Springsteen's alcoholic father (played with focused nuance by the wonderful Stephen Graham), record company pressure and a relationship to which he could not commit fully. all of which led to a crippling mental health crisis, Jeremy Allen White gives yet another knockout performance in the lead role that truly inhabits and conveys this iteration of Springsteen of that time and is magnetic as an on-screen presence, with some great supporting performances from Jeremy Strong as his famed manager and friend Jon Landau, and Odessa Young as the single-mother with whom Springsteen cautiously forms a genuine relationship. The film gives a reasonable and interesting insight into the tortuous process that shaped and created the stripped-back Nebraska album and forms a beautiful and personal companion to it. Springsteen's involvement and approval adds veracity to the material in this sombre, quietly reflective yet powerful film that almost becomes emotional overload in the final twenty minutes and is thrown into perspective knowing that global megastardom lay just around the corner.
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