In the past decade, there has been a deluge of great Hollywood films on rock stars, among the Bohemian Rhapsody2019 Rocket and 2022 ElvisEveryone made a fortune at the box office and was nominated for the Oscars, with Bohemian Rhapsody win four little golden men, including the best actor, and Rocket by winning one. These films certainly addressed dark aspects of the personal life of their subjects, but they were essentially musicals from Juke Box, apologies to present the greatest successes of the career of their subjects. That, for better or for worse, depending on what you are looking for, it is not what you should expect from Springsteen: Delive Me de Nowhere. And it will be interesting to see how it goes with the members of the Academy of Arts and Cinema Sciences.
Scott CooperThe film, which features the double winner of the Emmy Jeremy Allen White (Carmy of The bear) As a boss, had his world premiere at the Telluride Film Film Festival Herzog Theater Friday evening, with Bruce Springsteen Himself present. And a bit like Book 2023 from which Cooper adapted it, Warren Zanes‘ excellent Delive me from nowhere: the manufacture of the Nebraska by Bruce SpringsteenIt focuses almost entirely on one of the darkest moments in Springsteen’s life. In short, Spring is as much a film on depression as it is a film about being a rock star (“I know who you are”, a stranger said to Springsteen at some point, to which he answers: “Well, that makes us”), and in this way, strangely, it is a kind of Nebraska of its kind.
In the early 1980s, Springsteen was removed from his revolutionary album Born to runWho announced the arrival of a great artist and storyteller who focused on albums rather than the singles. But Freehold’s son, New Jersey, was not yet rich in rock, having paid an excessive amount of money in previous recording sessions to satisfy his perfectionism. It was terrified to encroach on the mega-library. And he was increasingly plagued by mental illness, something that had afflicted other members of his family – including and especially his father, whose behavior towards him and his mother, at the time, he was a child, always haunted him – and who contributed to his inability to maintain healthy romantic relationships.
As a Springsteen protection director Jon Landau (Succession Emmy Winner and The apprentice Oscar candidate Jeremy Fort) Pushed the pressure from his label to go out more music as soon as possible, and shortly after Springsteen began to go out with a charming single mother named Faye Romano (Odessa Young), he started to isolate himself to a greater measure than usual, immersing himself in dark literature (Flannery O’Connor) and films (Badlands), and record demos, isolation of your own room, on audio cassettes. By doing the demos, his initial intention was to understand songs at home, then to share them with his group, as opposed to time and money while trying to understand things during studio sessions. But he finally fell in love with their tune, acoustic and imperfect and insisted to release them in this form, which encountered great resistance from label frames.
As a person who recently made an immersion of several months and deep on everything related to Springsteen before a 75-minute interview with the man himself for my podcast, I greatly appreciate the great attention of the film with details and precision. But I also wonder if the occasional fans of Springsteen, of which I was before this company, made me a great fan, will care as much as wanting to see a representation of the man they have known from the half-century since Nebraska. In addition, given that the central love story of the film is not The one between Springsteen and Romano, but that between Springsteen and Landau, I hope that the film addressed the roots of this last relationship: in May 1974, when Landau, then musical critic, saw a pre-Born to run Springsteen performs in Boston, then wrote a piece in which he said: “I saw Rock and Roll Future, and his name is Bruce Springsteen”, which gave Springsteen a confidence he really needed at the time.
In any case, one thing with which no one can contest is the quality of the three central performance of the film. As a manager, White projects the soul and the fanfaronnade of Springsteen, and makes his own song capable. And in the support roles, Strong gives another transformer turn, this time like the anti-KENDALL ROY, while Young is charming and vulnerable. The three will be solid contenders for Oscar nominations, and I suspect that the film itself, as well as Cooper’s management and scenario, will be there with them.
