Deliver Me from Nowhere follows Bruce Springsteen as he crafts one of his most unusual, and most praised, albums. But the content we find here isn’t always as praise-worthy. Viewers will navigate a salacious sex scene and some unfortunate language, along with some regret-filled decisions.
Bruce Springsteen was nearly there.
After years of musical obscurity, the New Jersey boy was finally making it big. He had landed his first Top 40 song in 1975 with “Born to Run.” His fifth studio album, The River, became his first No. 1 album in 1980. They called him “The Boss” now, and everyone knew that the rocker was about to claim his corner office.
In 1981, everyone—his fans; his record label; even his longtime agent, Jon Landau—wanted to know what Springsteen had up his flannel sleeve for an encore. Would his next album go platinum? Generate a handful of hits? Mark him as the blue-collar troubadour for this generation?
“Our man’s on a rocket ship,” an exec from Columbia Records, tells Jon. “And we don’t want to miss that window.”
But rocket ships have never been Bruce’s thing. He’s always kept his feet on the ground, thanks. Let disco have its day. Let the other guys shoot fireworks on stage and dance on MTV. Bruce makes music, pure and clean—hard-rocking poetry about factory shifts, broken hearts and guys who can’t catch a break. He still calls New Jersey home, and you can still find him playing at the Stone Pony, backing up his old friends.
Forget what the fans want or the label expects. Bruce doesn’t jump through hoops. His sixth album—whatever it’ll look like, whatever it’ll sound like—will be true to what the Boss wants, no one else.
But what does the Boss want? What stories does he want to tell?
Bruce doesn’t know yet—but he’s figuring it out, note by note. And as he plucks at his guitar in his New Jersey house, he realizes that each note takes him deeper into his own past; each line digs into buried pain.
Bruce’s music has always been honest, and that honesty has led him to the cusp of superstardom. But now, that honesty feels honed to a cutting edge, and it slices deep and dark. As he sings and strums in his Jersey bedroom, he wonders whether he might lose himself in the music’s wounds.
He wonders if he already has.
As he struggles with both his music and the pressures that come with being a budding superstar, Bruce tells Jon, “Just trying to find something real in all the noise.” Jon tells him to just worry about the real: He’ll take care of the noise.
And so Jon does. Throughout Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Jon proves to be not just a fine manager but a first-rate friend. He helps guide Bruce through the labyrinth of label pressures and industry press. We hear references as to how Jon helped Bruce through past difficulties. And he stands up for Bruce’s unusual vision for this sixth album. He may not agree with Bruce’s process. He may not appreciate the dark, brooding songs that Bruce is crafting. But he’s committed to helping him—personally and professionally—every step of the way.
That partnership becomes especially important when the album is finally completed—an album that, the movie suggests, unearthed and gave voice to a legion of Bruce’s regrets, insecurities and troubled thoughts. Bruce struggles with depression in the album’s aftermath, and Jon quickly connects the artist with a counselor who can help. (The real Bruce Springsteen has struggled with depression for decades. He describes that period of time as “my first breakdown,” and he credits the real Jon Landau for getting him the help that he needed.)
The movie tells us that Bruce’s songwriting dredged up plenty of difficult relational issues between he and his father. But Bruce still proves to be a dutiful son, flying out to California when his dad is dealing with mental health issues of his own. We hear how he’s taken care of both his parents as he’s become more financially secure, and he clearly loves them both. “You did the best you could,” Bruce tells his father. “You had your own battles to fight.”
Bruce’s love interest, Faye, gives Bruce her St. Christopher medallion. “It kept me safe,” Faye tells him. And as she offers the pendant to the man, she tells him to have faith that it’ll “protect you and guide you where you need to go.”
Bruce and Jon sit and listen to a gospel rendition of the classic hymn “The Last Mile of the Way.”
Bruce reads a book by Flannery O’Conner, a writer of deep Catholic faith. Jon quotes O’Conner late in the movie, as well. It’s worth noting that O’Conner’s writings were indeed a huge influence on the real-world artist: In his book Songs, Springsteen wrote, “Her stories reminded me of the unknowability of God and contained a dark spirituality that resonated with my own feelings at the time.”
When Faye gives her St. Christopher medallion to Bruce (described above), she does so during a post-coital conversation in bed: The two are mostly covered, but both have bare shoulders. In the sex scene that precedes the conversation, we simply see Bruce and Faye’s heads and shoulders, but it’s obvious from movement and expression what’s going on.
Bruce and Faye kiss elsewhere, including during their first date. “I’m definitely making a mistake,” Faye says—words that prove to be sadly prophetic. Though the relationship begins as a no-strings-attached sort of thing, Faye starts to think it may turn into something more. But Bruce’s depression feeds into some deeply regrettable decisions that end their relationship—and, sadly, filter back into his depression.
Faye’s a single mom, and her little girl’s dad is mostly out of the picture. Some women at Bruce’s shows wear slightly revealing tops. We hear the Springsteen song “I’m on Fire,” which holds some sexual tension in the lyrics.
In black-and-white flashbacks, we see snippets of Bruce’s difficult relationship with his father, Douglas. In one scene, Douglas walks into 8-year-old Bruce’s bedroom, demanding that the boy stand up and spar with him. “Daddy, you know I don’t like to fight,” Bruce says, but his father makes him. He forces his son to punch him in the hand and then in the chest before he knocks the boy down with his own heavy-handed slap. (Adele, Bruce’s mom, pulls Douglas out of the room.)
Adele and Douglas argue constantly during Bruce’s childhood. While we never see them get into a physical altercation, Adele does call Douglas a “bully” sometimes. And during one quarrel, Bruce sneaks downstairs and hits Douglas in the back with a baseball bat. Douglas angrily rips the bat away—but he sarcastically praises the boy for protecting his mother before throwing the bat down.
Bruce tears down a rural street in his new sports car, forcing the thing to go faster and faster in what appears to be a near-suicide attempt. He eventually slams on the breaks and skids to a stop, screaming in anger and frustration. He listens to I believe, “Frankie Teardrop” from the punk duo Suicide: The song contains some extraordinarily dark lyrics referencing murder and suicide, and one of Bruce’s friends suggests that he shouldn’t listen to the song twice. When Jon knows that Bruce is struggling with depression, he begs Bruce not to do “anything” until Jon can get him some help.
Early on in the album’s development, Bruce draws inspiration from Charles Starkweather, a spree killer who murdered 11 people in the late 1950s. Bruce reads newspaper accounts of Starkweather’s crimes, and he’s drawn to the fact that the killer says he was “mad at the world.” He repeatedly watches the movie Badlands, which was also based on Starkweather’s murder spree: We see a scene wherein the killer murders the father of his 15-year-old girlfriend and another scene where they burn down a farmhouse.
Two uses of the f-word and six of the s-word. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch” and “h—.” God’s name is misused four times—twice with the word “d–n.” Jesus’ name is abused once.
In flashbacks, we see that Bruce’s father, Douglas, drank heavily. In the movie’s opening scene, in fact, Adele sends 8-year-old Bruce into a bar to retrieve his father and bring him home. (“Wait outside,” Douglas says.) In another, Douglas staggers home, apparently under the influence. The film suggests that Douglas’ violence was at least partly the product of drinking too much.
In the film’s present day, Bruce again is forced to drag his father out of a bar and bring him home. (Adele tearfully tells Bruce that Douglas lost his job, stopped taking his medication and had been missing for three days.)
Douglas smokes cigarettes, too, and in flashbacks he’s rarely seen without one. Others also smoke. Bruce appears to drink a glass of whiskey.
As work progresses on the album, Bruce progressively retreats from outside contact. Lost in the work and dealing with his spiraling mental health, he essentially ghosts his girlfriend, shuts out Jon and spends increasing amounts of time alone.
In flashback, Douglas asks Bruce to skip school so they can see a movie together: the horror film Night of the Hunter.
Bruce Springsteen wrote a slew of what became some of his greatest hits during the film’s 1981-82 timeframe: “Glory Days”; “I’m on Fire”; “Born in the U.S.A.” But none of them actually made it on his sixth studio album, Nebraska.
Almost the entire album was recorded in Bruce’s bedroom, according to Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere. It wasn’t supposed to be like that: Bruce had just planned to use the cheap, four-track recorder almost like a notepad—a way to get a few musical thoughts down on tape. But the songs that began as unfinished musings took on sonic, spiritual weight. And when Bruce added an echo effect to all of the tracks, he felt like he’d struck something better than a gold record. He’d tapped into something deep, primal and personal.
Of the echo effect, Bruce says in the movie, “I think it’s the distance we’re hearing—like it’s coming from the past or something.”
Indeed, the album does come up from the past in Deliver Me From Nowhere. Past history, but Bruce’s past, too, rising like a ghost to haunt its maker.
For some, the film can be haunting, too.
When a piece of art strikes you hard—be it a song, an album, a movie—it’s not because of what that bit of entertainment’s about. Because when it hits home, it’s about you. It doesn’t matter what the characters are named. It doesn’t matter whether they’re in Nebraska or on Neptune. We find ourselves in the folds of the thing. And perhaps, like Bruce in the making of Nebraska, we register it as both catharsis and prison, feeling both freed and trapped at the same time.
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere is getting some awards-season buzz, and I get why. While Springsteen’s prime may be remembered only by those of a certain age, there’s a certain timelessness to both his music and the themes he explores. His story—at least the story we see here—feels very much like a Springsteen ballad, both painfully individual and curiously universal.
Alas, the content in the movie whittles down its audience. One unnecessary sex scene and some rating-pushing language will push this out of many a family’s consideration. The movie’s inescapable themes of imperfect families, bad decisions and mental illness may be troubling to some viewers, as well.
And while the film effectively unpacks the creation of a dynamite Springsteen album, it gives us characters much in the Springsteen vein, too: characters full of flaws, burdened with regret, suffering from experiences out of their control—and decisions very much in it. Indeed, we see few admirable characters performing aspirational deeds. But perhaps we see a hint of ourselves—trudging forward, one note at a time.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
