The New York Times reports there is a bio pic in production about Bruce Springsteen which focuses particularly on the period of his life when he made “Nebraska”, post – River tour and pre therapy and mega stardom. It stars Jeremy Allen White as Bruce and the Boss is actively involved in the production. Looks interesting.
Been known for about a year and it is out next month! The Nebraska box set is clearly a tie-in
Looking forward to it, and already enjoying the wild change in mood three quarters of the way through the trailer.
The trailer. It looks awful.
One line in it is definitely awful. Looking forward to the film nevertheless.
I counted at least 6 in the ‘repair’ speech alone.
You’re right @Gatz I prefer the trailer above
News to me but I don’t follow him that closely.
Has anyone done a review of this movie.
I quite liked it. Low expectations on a wet nothing sort of Sunday. Ideal for Mrs Wells who knew little about Bruce.
Major black mark for the bloke playing Clarence in the opening band scene – did not look like someone actually playing a sax.
Here’s my mate’s opinion.
“Saw it last night. I agree with you that it was nothing like the Dylan one, but only about that.
I hated it. Almost laughing out loud by the end.
A half-decent story over-told, over-angsted, over-blown and certainly over-long. Rather like a fair bit of the Boss’ music, come to think of it (and I’ve been a major fan since the 70s). Think ‘Born To Run’, a great album of great songs murdered by a wall of sound.
The confected drama over whether to leave the tape-hiss or echo from a wobbly tape-deck on the finished product can serve I guess as a (rather clumsy) metaphor for a guy hoping to achieve a “warts and all” authenticity…
but boy oh boy was that ladled on thick. By the end of it I was almost yelling out “FFS just put the fcking record out! Why worry 120% and over-share 120% about doing anything that when you’ve got some many other things to worry 120% about…?”
And I repeat, I’ve always been a fan. But unfortunately, as was once famously said of the novelist Henry James, it allows Bruce to do what he has always done: chewing on more than he bit”
.
Large chunks of your mate’s opinion of the movie echo my opinion of Springsteen’s music in general…
I have seen it, I wrote this at the end of my box set review
Addendum: I did indeed see Deliver Me from Nowhere. Thought it was excellent, however not without one or two flaws. My daughter, who knew nothing of this period, liked it a lot, but don’t except a musical jukebox type movie. It is a film mainly about depression, family relationships and friendship and how that related to the recording and release of the Nebraska album. Jeremy Allen White was excellent, but if there are to be any award nominations then I predict that Jeremy Strong will get one, he plays manager (and friend) Jon Landau impeccably.
I love Bruce and I enjoyed the movie because Nebraska is a fabulous record. That said, I didn’t think it was a very well made film.
*Spoilers follow*
The film is framed around Springsteen’s personal struggle to reconcile his past with his future. And I know this because the script literally told me so, repeatedly, via lashings of exposition. A better made movie would not have needed the various scenes of Jon Landau sat at his breakfast table literally explaining to his mute, concerned wife what was going on inside Bruce. The audience would already have understood. The fact that it needed to do quite so much “telling” is a pretty clear sign that the director failed to land the plane.
I thought Jeremy Allen White, while doing a very convincing impression of Bruce’s singing face, brought too much baggage to the role. It felt completely impossible to separate his performance here from his performance in The Bear, because the two were more or less identical, it’s just that instead of suffering inner torment over whether the parsnip is sliced thin enough he’s now suffering inner torment over tape hiss.
The film lent hard into a reading of Nebraska as Springsteen exorcising the demons of his childhood, and particularly his relationship with his father. So we get endless flashbacks of Stephen Graham drinking moodily, and super on the nose footage of kids playing near a literal mansion on the hill. But it never really brought to life that trauma, just used it as window dressing, and then waved it away at the end – one good cry in therapy and a bit of a sit on Dad’s knee and we all get to move on. As we left the cinema my wife remarked “he was very upset about his Mum and Dad but they seemed really quite lovely at the end”.
Personally, I think Nebraska is a record built on class guilt. The movie touches on this, but largely overlooks it in favour of childhood trauma, which is simpler to show us onscreen. It’s about Springsteen realising that he’s pulled out of the town full of losers and won, and questioning why he got so lucky and what happens to the people he left behind. The scene where he almost crashes the sportscar nods to this, but it’s so throwaway and is never really built on. We get told it a couple of times, but we never really see or feel it.
Oh, and I thought Stephen Graham was miscast too – not once did I come close to actually believing he was Springsteen’s father and he looked ridiculous in prosthetics.
Because they didn’t properly sell-in the trauma, at some point in the movie you find yourself feeling quite sorry for the poor fuckers trapped in a studio with Springsteen. Not least the E-Street band, who come out of this movie looking like a bunch of session musicians.
I wanted to like it, and I think it was brave to head in the direction it did. It’s nice to see a biopic of this sort that focuses on inner struggle more than outer glory. And yet, it ends up in tv movie territory because it never truly convinces the audience of its own stakes, or of the gravity of the internal discord that is at its heart. At some stage, it just becomes Carmy from The Bear, sat in a lake house with all the lights off, because that’s the kind of intense, woe-is-me shit that Carmy has on his mood board.
The music is absolutely fucking fabulous though. And I was glad that Suicide got a nod, and that I got to see ten seconds of Badlands up on the big screen.
OOAA, I’m sure
I agree with some of that and hinted at flaws, one of them being Landau’s explanations to his wife. The other big one was that the made up relationship didn’t really work and could probably have been left out.
Disagree about your opinions on some of the actors, I believed JAW was Bruce more or less and I thought Stephen Graham was very good.
I thought it was strange that e.g. Steve didn’t have a single line in the movie, but it is probably fairly true that they are like session musicians in the studio. They may make the odd suggestion but Bruce writes the songs, sings the songs, decides what they will sound like and what goes on the album. In the Born to Run documentary we even see him telling Clarence what to play note by note for his Jungleland solo
I can imagine a follow up with same actors, Landau “it’s a great album but we need a hit single, Bruce” ….
Out of interest, have you watched The Bear?
I honestly think I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if I hadn’t seen that show. Found the performance incredibly distracting.
Yes I have. Probably why he was cast, an artistic perfectionist who has trouble committing to relationships. Bruce is way better looking though!
Ah, may have just been me then.
I agree on the looks!
“Bruce writes the songs, sings the songs”
If only Dennis Waterman had stuck around
For a bit longer, this seems a part he would
have relished.
Kermode’s take:
(and BTW the scene in the original trailer didn’t make it into the finished movie)
I did like Landau’s line when Bruce. Is just off the road and having trouble adjusting. “ sometimes the quiet can be a bit loud”.