BOSS MITIGATION

Opening in the multiplexes this weekend:

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere--Exhausted after the 1982 tour for his album The River, Bruce Springsteen rented a house in Colt's Neck, New Jersey, and tried to figure out what to do next. Unsettled by his rapidly increasing stardom, he started strumming an acoustic guitar and writing downbeat songs about downtrodden, desperate working-class Americans. These would make up his 1982 release Nebraska, as well as his 1984 hit machine Born in the USA.

Scott Cooper's biopic, adapted from a 2023 book by Del Fuegos guitarist Warren Zanes, recounts this chapter from the life of "The Boss" (Jeremy Allen White, as an adult). The focus is narrowly on that brief but critical period in his development, but we also see him haunted by his past; his troubled childhood with his drunken, scary but not unloving Dad (Stephen Graham) and his anxious, loving Mom, played here by Gaby Hoffmann. How upsetting is it that Gaby Hoffmann is now old enough to play Mom roles?

Shot in fine, muted tones by Masanobu Takayanagi, it's a watchable, absorbing movie. Although we're shown Springsteen's wary, commitment-phobic relationship with a lovely (fictional) new girlfriend (Odessa Young), Cooper honestly tries to keep the focus on the vagaries of the creative process; how moping around, reading Flannery O'Connor and repeatedly watching Terrence Malick's Badlands can be essential to finding your voice.

But this behavior, however essential, can be a drag for the people around you, and that includes not only friends and family and lovers and co-workers but also the movie audience watching you. White is first-rate; exploding into life in the scenes in which he sings (blasphemy alert: I'm not sure I don't like White's singing better than Springsteen's), suggesting that performance may have been a form of therapy, even self-medication, for Springsteen. He's moving in his depressive mode, too, but there's no getting around it, the movie becomes a long dark night of the soul in these passages, and they make up a lot of screen time.

The best performance in Deliver Me from Nowhere is by Jeremy Strong as Springsteen manager Jon Landau. His hangdog manner is hilarious; every time his boss The Boss gives Landau more bad news, not only about what kind of album Nebraska is going to be but about how he wants it released--without press, a tour, or even Springsteen's picture on the sleeve--you see it register on Strong's sickened face. Then you see him stoically shake it off.

As depicted here, he's skeptical about the business wisdom of Springsteen's decisions, but he walks the walk when it comes to defending artistic integrity; his loyalty never wavers. He's the hero of the movie.