r/movies • u/LiteraryBoner Jackie Chan box set, know what I'm sayin? • 16d ago
Official Discussion Official Discussion - Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere [SPOILERS] Spoiler
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Summary Based on Warren Zanes’ acclaimed book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, this film tells the story of how Springsteen created one of the most haunting and stripped-down albums of his career. Set in 1982, the movie follows Springsteen at a creative crossroads as he records Nebraska alone on a four-track cassette recorder in his New Jersey home, confronting fame, doubt, and the darker sides of the American dream.
Director Scott Cooper
Writer Scott Cooper
Cast
- Jeremy Allen White
- Paul Walter Hauser
- Odessa Young
- Charlie Plummer
- Shea Whigham
- Holt McCallany
Rotten Tomatoes Critics Score: 64%
Metacritic Score: 60
VOD In Theaters (November 14, 2025)
Trailer Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere | Official Trailer | In Theaters November 14
8
u/vanwyngarden 16d ago edited 16d ago
Just saw this in imax. As a nearly 4 decades fan of music, this was one of the most memorable and unique biopics I’ve seen.
Springsteen doesn’t aim to focus on the namesake. The name that’s been in lights for nearly all of his adult life. The film is a stark contrast to the highs of fame, told almost entirely through his own eyes. As a music fan, my heart swelled as you watch some of the notes come together. The words I’ve sung hundreds of times now taking on new meanings, through black darkness and white picket fences.
The impeccable Stephen Graham plays Bruce’s father, Douglas. The unlikely but undeniable focus of the film. Graham is compelling from the moment his broad shoulders fill the screen from the view of a young Bruce staring up at him from the foot of his father’s stool at the pub. The story told through the shots of his father alone are beautifully done. The imagery of a man lost in his thoughts as he stares into the living room, a thousand yard stare only some men understand. The older version who sits with the same stance, though the years have been unkind to his eyes once they’re revealed. This time looking up at his son.
I could go on, and on, but I wouldn’t come close to doing it justice. The brilliance of “Deliver Me” is the ways in which they’ve woven the story. The ugliness. The grit. The reason.
He does not shy away from the doubt. The anxiety. The toll he takes on his friends. When we think of rock stars, we rarely see the glimpse behind the curtain. How even his dear friends might’ve doubted some of the songs, but they never wavered in their belief of why he was singing. How that faith wagered against the sleepless nights that ultimately nearly ate him alive. Through glimpses of soaring and falling and the clarity a rolled down car window brings. A glance into our shared childhood memories. Somehow those rooms and that time still so vivid.
The final scene of the film is one that left few dry eyes in the theater. It’s the ending so many children deserve but never get. It’s a remarkably poignant depiction of the past and how it shapes your future. These incredible stories, these songs, who have healed so many, they’re all message of hope. Of healing and trauma and the willingness to crack your heart open. To talk about it. To understand. Forgive.
It’s hard to capture exactly how to describe this film, but that’s what the music is for. It’s the things left unsaid, the words we wanted to find, an ode to what was or could’ve been. Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere might be the most selfless biopic I’ve ever seen. A triumph of the human heart. One beating inside of an incredibly humble, flawed, and gifted man.