Bruce Springsteen Understands Depression. His Biopic Doesn't

Here’s a story that never grows tired of the telling: Bruce Springsteen, on the cusp of greatness following a string of instant classic albums that turned a scrawny New Jersey hippie into a bona fide rock star, pivoted to a spare, gothic folk album. Nebraska mystified and frustrated executives, who couldn’t understand why the Boss would zag into such commercially unviable territory with a fuzzy, warbly collection of bedroom demos about losers and outlaws on the fringes of society, but it made sense to Springsteen. To hear him tell the tale, it was the only thing his personal demons would allow him to release at the time, and he didn’t feel comfortable releasing Born in the U.S.A.— the album that would solidify his legacy—until he’d exorcised Nebraska. 

Writer and director Scott Cooper brings this story to the screen in thew new film Deliver Me From Nowhere, working off Warren Zanes’ book about Nebraska. Jeremy Allen White is tasked with playing Springsteen, and he does a nice job of it. In a scene near the end, White’s Springsteen finally sits down with a therapist and tries to open up, but only sobs can come out. It’s powerful. White long ago mastered portraying this sort of incoherent anguish on The Bear, and he’s extremely effective as a man struggling with emotions he can’t articulate. It’s too bad the movie doesn’t deserve his performance. The script is riddled with musical biopic cliches and, more damning, a poor grasp of what depression is.