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Springsteen - Deliver Me From Nowhere
How good is the newest musician biopic?
Review: To keep this review brief, this movie conceptually is very similar to ‘A Complete Unknown,’ the Bob Dylan Biopic, but this was executed so much better, having substance instead of just the show. While I don’t want to make this review a ‘What I didn’t like about A Complete Unknown,’ I think starting this way allows me to put in perspective the aspects of this movie that were done differently/better and why these differences actually made a better movie.
To start off, both movies surround the idea of the artist ( in this case Bruce Springsteen played by Jeremy Allen White) attempting to write a significant album in the artist’s career that ended up being one of the significant albums that they wrote. The album Bob Dylan wrote ended up changing the folk genre as a whole, but throughout the course of the movie I never seemed to understand the purpose, the reason, or the significance of the album. Because of this it made him seemingly destroy the original nature of the genre just ‘just because.’ Because of the lack of intent and purpose, this really didn’t make the movie enjoyable to me, as it felt like the movie as a whole lacked that same purpose. Springsteen’s album on the other hand was supposed to be a complete departure of his previous album, finding events from throughout his life that he wrote songs about in order to be some sort of therapy, whether it be his upbringing and the way he was raised or the current relationship he was in. Because of this the movie actually felt like it had this purpose to it, especially as the movie took you through pivotal moments of his past, the joys and the struggles of his current romantic relationships, and his eventual reconciliation to his father.
It was a culmination of all of these things that really made this biopic stand out significantly more than ‘A Complete Unknown.’ You cared about Bruce, you cared about the relationships he had with people, and you really cared about how and when he was going to reconcile with his past (mainly with his father). While I would say that ‘A Complete Unknown’ was shot and produced just slightly better (James Mangold did a fantastic job with it), but this movie overall was so much more impactful, concluding with a beautiful coming together of Bruce and his father. It was simple, it made me feel more than the entirety of ‘A Complete Unknown.’
While a small part of the film, I really enjoyed how the music playing in the background of the Springsteen movie were not just Springsteen songs. The Bob Dylan movie and the Bob Marley movie only had those artists’ songs playing in the background, so by the end I kind of got tired of their songs. In this movie, after just a few minutes of screentime you heard the first non-Springsteen song being played and it was Foreigner, which made me so happy to hear. While I don’t dislike Bruce Springsteen’s songs, only hearing his songs at certain moments in the film made them actually stand out and have significance, having other artists’ songs bring the necessary emotion and tone to different scenes.
While I think too many biopics have come out recently, especially about individuals who shouldn’t have movies made about them, I would say this is the best of the musician biopics I have seen. It had so much more heart and emotion to it than I was expecting, so even if you’re a Springsteen fan or not I think this is a great movie to watch and most people would enjoy watching this.
Rating: 4/5
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