A few weeks ago, I went to see the Springsteen biopic, Deliver Me From Nowhere. It’s solid, 7/10 stuff, focusing on a brief hiatus in Bruce’s rise to greatness, which saw him take a step back from the album-tour-album treadmill to retreat to a place (the New Jersey woods) where he could reflect on how he had reached this point in his career and what he wanted from the future. Perhaps inevitably, his Thoreau-esque journey led to the creation of another album, Nebraska, a stripped-back collection of songs recorded on a four-track with just an acoustic guitar. It’s a brilliant work, a personal favourite, impossibly spare and heartfelt.
The film has plenty going for it, but it’s no Nebraska. Stephen Graham has a great cameo as Springsteen senior – one scene is just a masterclass in how he can act with his hands. It’s got one wonderful studio scene, where Born In The USA (which he also wrote while in the woods) is transformed from a simple, skeletal sketch into a stadium-conquering behemoth of sound and fury. And it leaves the audience in little doubt that even the biggest star is only ever one flop away from disaster, so it helps to have Jon Landau in your corner.
But what it doesn’t have is jeopardy. We all know that Bruce is going to be just fine. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal at stake and that’s because there isn’t. Nebraska has long since been recognised as a masterpiece and The Boss is, well, the clue is in the name.
It’s also not as good as A Complete Unknown, last year’s similar deep dive into a critical period in the career of Bob Dylan. Admittedly, it’s an unfair comparison, as James Mangold’s movie was one of the best of last year, despite it being largely overlooked (inevitably) by the Academy. But Bob and Bruce have trodden similar paths down the years so comparison is inevitable. A Complete Unknown has a screenplay fizzing with sharp dialogue, peopled by vibrant characters brought to life in vivid detail. And yes, we know Bob is going to be fine too, but this feels like a defining crossroads in his life and career.
But the biggest thing working against Deliver Me From Nowhere, for this viewer at least, was that it kept calling to mind this astonishing piece of comic brilliance from The Onion. Of course, that’s not the film’s fault. Lay the blame for that at the door of the anonymous genius who identified and skewered an all-too-familiar trope in US culture which Nebraska itself undoubtedly helped create. The Onion is the best.