20th Century Studios<\/span><\/p> READ MORE:<\/strong> The Best Movie Musicals For People Who Hate Movie Musicals<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n This\u00a0may be the only way to make a\u00a0Nebraska<\/em>\u00a0movie; one in minor keys, with the E Street Band barely present. In Deliver Me From Nowhere<\/em>, the darkness isn\u2019t on the edge of town; it\u2019s already blanketed all of Monmouth County. White, a soulful actor who can communicate enormous emotional pain with barely a word, is very good at conjuring this wounded artist on the brink of an\u00a0psychological collapse.<\/p>\n But I wish\u00a0writer\/director Scott Cooper<\/a>\u00a0had gone further. The real Springsteen refused to compromise on\u00a0Nebraska.\u00a0<\/em>He hated the versions of his\u00a0Nebraska<\/em>\u00a0songs he recorded with his band, so he shelved them in favor of the original demos he\u00a0created in his bedroom. His team spent weeks trying to figure out how to translate the distinctive sound on his homemade tape, which had been recorded improperly on crude equipment, to\u00a0a master recording. The result was his most personal and direct musical statement; the one Springsteen himself now calls his definitive album.<\/p>\n But while that uncompromising spirit clearly animated the choice to make a Bruce Springsteen movie with a compressed timeline, you still\u00a0feel Cooper\u2019s somewhat\u00a0incongruous attempts to lighten the cinematic version of this bleak period in\u00a0Springsteen\u2019s\u00a0life. The film opens with a\u00a0big concert scene from the end of\u00a0The River<\/em> tour; it doesn\u2019t serve the story much, but at least lets the audience enjoy rock star Bruce before he\u00a0spends the next two hours watching\u00a0Badlands<\/em> on television and tinkering with a waterlogged boombox. The same goes for later scenes in the studio with the E Street Band, where they blaze through a high-energy recording of \u201cBorn in the U.S.A.\u201d that Springsteen loves \u2014 but knows will not suit the downbeat album he has envisioned.<\/p>\n 20th Century Studios<\/span><\/p> The only other upbeat\u00a0sequences in Deliver Me From Nowhere<\/em>\u00a0come\u00a0from its\u00a0glimpses of\u00a0a relationship that\u00a0Springsteen strikes up with a waitress named Faye (Odessa Young).\u00a0She is a Springsteen fan \u2014 as all residents of New Jersey are required by law to be \u2014 and she adores when Bruce invites her\u00a0out for a late night ride on the Asbury Park boardwalk carousel. But if you know anything about the real Bruce, you know whatever happiness he finds with this woman is not going to last. (If you don\u2019t<\/em> know anything about the real Bruce, this film may not be to your taste.)<\/p>\n The Springsteen of\u00a0Deliver Me From Nowhere\u00a0<\/em>is already\u00a0a hugely popular rock star. He\u2019s also\u00a0deeply ambivalent about his success and, even more importantly, still haunted by a rocky childhood spent at the mercy of a depressed, alcoholic father (Stephen Graham). Cooper incorporates numerous black-and-white flashbacks to Springsteen\u2019s early days in Freehold, New Jersey, most involving physical intimidation, a few\u00a0devolving into outright beatings. Later,\u00a0Cooper\u00a0goes even further, and\u00a0depicts Springsteen suffering from\u00a0panic-attack-induced hallucinations,\u00a0where characters from the past appear to him in the present.<\/p>\n Which is to say: At a certain point, Deliver Me From Nowhere\u00a0<\/em>sort of loses the thread\u00a0of its\u00a0stripped-down,\u00a0unadorned approach.\u00a0<\/em>And if you\u2019re\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>going to stick to the more grounded, unembellished version of this story, why use it at all? Why not just make the big sweeping Springsteen biopic \u2014 the one filled with\u00a0his most famous songs and raucous concert footage \u2014 that most people would probably prefer?<\/p>\n 20th Century Studios<\/span><\/p> I\u2019m not entirely sure I can answer that question.\u00a0Deliver Me From Nowhere<\/em>\u00a0is appropriately reverent\u00a0when it comes to the life of this great artist. (Landau\u2019s character exists in the story mostly to give Springsteen pep talks and to tell skeptical record company executives \u201cIn this office, my office, we believe in Bruce Springsteen.\u201d) To its credit,\u00a0the film doesn\u2019t treat\u00a0Springsteen as a saint either; the subplot involving his relationship with Faye shows how the young Bruce could be cold and distant, and\u00a0more than a little self-centered. Basically, you get to see Bruce as a real guy, which is what\u2019s always made him so valuable; his grounded, relatable approach to the outlandish, unrelatable profession of rock star.<\/p>\n It would have been very easy for Springsteen to\u00a0stick the\u00a0Nebraska<\/em> demos in a drawer somewhere so he could immediately release the far more commercial\u00a0Born in the U.S.A<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Deliver Me From Nowhere\u00a0<\/em>depicts the choice to stick with difficult, uncommercial material as\u00a0an act of artistic heroism. That should make the movie a story about sticking to your creative guns and refusing to bow to commercial pressure.\u00a0The best thing you can say about this movie is that its structure\u00a0mirrors that message perfectly. The worst thing you can say about it is that a fair number of its individual beats\u00a0do not.<\/p>\n RATING: 6\/10<\/strong><\/p>\n Springsteen: Deliver\u00a0Me From Nowhere plays this week at the New York Film Festival<\/a>. It is scheduled to open in theaters on October 24.<\/em><\/p>\n Paul Thomas Anderson has made 10 films to date. We ranked them all. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nEvery Paul Thomas Anderson Film, Ranked From Worst to Best<\/h2>\n