"When the first trailer for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere was released this summer, skeptical viewers immediately seized on a monologue delivered by Jon Landau (played by Jeremy Strong), Bruce Springsteen's longtime manager, explaining that the young Boss grew up with a hole in the floor of his childhood bedroom. "What he's doing with this album is, he's repairing that hole in his floor," Landau says, somewhat literally, about Springsteen's creative process. "He's repairing that hole in himself.""
"The speech was wisely excised from the final theatrical cut, but the "hole" line lingers over the writer-director Scott Cooper's film, in which Springsteen's childhood is an open wound-the abyss he gazes into as he writes the songs that would appear on his 1982 album, Nebraska. Deliver Me From Nowhere follows Warren Zanes's book of the same title in emphasizing Nebraska as a personal breakthrough, one that was followed by a near-mental breakdown."
Deliver Me From Nowhere frames Springsteen's childhood as an open wound and links the creation of Nebraska to that wound. The film opens in black and white during the 1950s and depicts an intimidating, often violent father figure. The narrative then leaps to 1981, showing an adult Springsteen restless after touring for The River and searching for creative renewal. The film follows Warren Zanes's emphasis on Nebraska as a personal breakthrough followed by a near-mental breakdown. The biographical focus narrows the album to paternal conflict and blocked masculinity, underselling Springsteen's wider engagement with American iconography and musical traditions.
#bruce-springsteen #nebraska-1982-album #film-adaptation #paternal-conflict #american-musical-traditions
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