Redefining Music Films: Springsteen's 'Deliver Me from Nowhere' Breaks the Mold”
In the first 20 minutes of “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere,” Bruce Springsteen, portrayed by Jeremy Allen White, is sold a car. Shortly after signing paperwork, the car salesman says, “I know who you are, you know.”
Springsteen replies by saying softly, “Well, that makes one of us,” as he drives away, returning hastily to his cold, empty New Jersey mansion.
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“Deliver Me from Nowhere” is a film directed by Scott Cooper that strips away the emphasis on fame and places it on the loneliness of stardom. With pieces from Springsteen’s autobiography, “Born to Run,” and pivotal moments from Warren Zanes’ book, “Deliver Me from Nowhere,” the distance between a rockstar and his estranged family shows a side of Springsteen that many have yet to uncover. The in-between moments void of distractions seep through the screen as we find the star to be less of a musical god and more of an imperfect human.
On the stage after blinding paparazzi camera flashes, he’s the main attraction; everyone wants him. But behind the curtain when the darkness encompasses his mind and body, it’s an entirely different story.
The film is set in 1981, after Springsteen’s latest sold-out tour for his album, “The River.” He’s tired of listening to what music critics want: Momentum, album, tour, another album, another tour. He’s yearning to create music that feels more true to himself than to a crowd of strangers. There’s something missing in his music that allows millions of people to connect with it rather than just thousands: authenticity. What he doesn’t know is that when he begins to listen to the deafening silence that encompasses him after performing, he’s forced to face his trauma head on. Springsteen himself has denoted the period between 1981 and 1982 as the time of his “first breakdown.”
After his final show on his tour, he’s already looking for more musical inspiration— and it needs to be different than anything he has ever produced. While watching TV one night, he comes across a movie based on serial killer Charles Starkweather. It’s not until Springsteen is researching Starkweather’s story at a library that I feel Springsteen has latched onto the murderer’s detached sense of violence because of the distorted abuse he faced in his own life. Even in his thirties, Springsteen felt an earth-shattering feeling of fear rip through him at the sight of his childhood home—the memories of his abusive father seeping back into the present.
Art has a remarkable ability to serve both as an escape from reality and as a mirror through which people can relate their own experiences. As humans, we sometimes make art to place our pain on hold and imagine a place where our problems don’t exist. Maybe in a book trilogy with an alternate universe. Or a piece of art that takes you forward in time where your problems simply cannot exist. Yet, art can only take you so far. Even when not creating, you begin begging for those imaginary universes to be real because you can’t actually exist in this world. You find out that your problems are too heavy to just keep creating without properly acknowledging them. Up until this moment, Springsteen has created music to escape his problems. He’s realizing now that he must encounter these demons from his childhood—for the sake of his career, his own mental health and the impact he has on millions of people.
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Trauma has a way of creeping back into your life in funny ways. Sometimes you’ll hear a song associated with a painful memory, or a taste that reminds you of a night you wish to forget. But no matter how far you move, or how much success you find, the pain follows you. It never lets you forget its weight until you make peace with it. Until you become comfortable with the silence. Until you’re certain you won’t let it consume you.
In a brave attempt at facing his worst fears, Springsteen isolates himself and writes his most devastatingly personal record yet. He records “Nebraska” on a four-track recorder in the bedroom of his New Jersey home, with nothing but ambient noise, his voice and acoustic guitar. It’s artistically daring and a bit mad, but Springsteen did absolutely zero promotional work for the album for the sake of fans experiencing it only from their own perspectives. No outside biases—just authentic emotions pouring through analog tape.
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As an artist myself, this is what music is truly about: Morphing pain into something others can feel simply by listening. It’s a form of necessary therapy that transfigures the weight on your shoulders and the shadows in your eyes into poetry. Once you finish creating and you hear how this art has touched another person’s soul, it shows you that you are never actually alone.
Hearing an artist’s life story is an affirming act of love to yourself. That, maybe, I’m not weak for still having a trauma response for an experience that happened five years ago. Maybe being broken is the only path to take towards feeling content with our lives. Maybe I just need a hell of a good album to remind me that there are always rays of light to be found even in the hush of the night. That art will always be there to catch you if you fall.
“Nebraska” reminds us that darkness is not something that we must escape. Darkness is a long, slow walk on the way to find light. And even when you do find it, you can look back on that path, grateful you didn’t run through your growth in a haze. Maybe you’ll even find beauty in those empty stretches of land across from your childhood house and in the bus stations where you first learned how to sit with yourself.
As Springsteen put it: “At the end of every hard-earned day, people find some reason to believe.”
Strike out,
Writer: Autumn Johnstone
Editor: Ria Pai
Autumn Johnstone is an editorial writer and copy editor for Strike Magazine GNV. When they're not catching up on the latest pop culture gossip, you can find them exploring coffee shops and browsing local vinyl stores. You can reach out to them on Instagram @mynameissntfall or by email at autumnbell2005@gmail.com.
