A Complete Unknown

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

29/10/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Many people who, like me, purchased Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska on its release in 1982, must have experienced the same bewilderment as I did. How had the Boss gone from the stirring, upbeat anthems of Thunder Road and Hungry Heart to this bleak, introspective slice of Americana? And, perhaps more importantly, why? Okay, after a few listens, a couple of those ballads did eventually get their hooks into me but, as a career move, it seemed a spectacularly ill-judged decision.

Scott Cooper’s film, based on Warren Zane’s book, sets out to explain exactly what happened and, in choosing to concentrate on that difficult album, runs the risk of alienating itself from those fans who were anticipating an upbeat celebration of the great musician’s life and work (much like the record itself). True, when we first see Bruce (Jeremy Allen White) onscreen, he’s powering through a blistering performance of Born to Run. Coming off stage, he’s informed by his manager and close friend, Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong), that, with his latest album (The River) at number one in the charts, he is standing on the edge of superstardom.

But in the following break from touring, Bruce appears to be heading into a depression. He happens to catch a glimpse of Terence Malik’s 1973 film, Badlands, on TV, featuring newcomers Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek – and in that moment a spark is ignited. Pretty soon, he’s reading up on Charles Starkweather and the killing spree he and his teenage girlfriend, Caril Anne Fugate, embarked on back in 1958. Bruce starts to write the lyrics of what will become Nebraska’s title track.

He’s driven by powerful memories of his own childhood, the issues he experienced with his abusive father, Douglas, played in flashback by Stephen Graham, who gives a brooding, mostly silent performance opposite an intense turn from Matthew Antony Pelicano Jnr as Young Bruce. Something that happened between father and son in those formative years is clearly behind Bruce’s current malaise.

Back in the present, he enlists the help of recording technician Mike Batlan (Paul Walter Hauser) to capture the new songs as they emerge on a simple 4-track deck at home. But, as his obsession with the new project steadily grows – and his record label continually pester him for new product – so he becomes increasingly determined that the resulting album must be as stripped-back as the songs on the ‘demo’ cassette he’s already recorded…

Deliver Me from Nowhere is essentially about a kind of exorcism, an artist’s attempt to cleanse himself of the emotional baggage he’s carried around since childhood. While the story offers an interesting angle on a lesser-known aspect of Springsteen’s career, it’s not the kind of material that biopics are traditionally built upon. Several viewers at the screening I attend decide to vote with their feet around an hour in. While I’m engaged enough to stay in my seat till the closing credits, I have to admit that overall the film is a mixture of the good, the bad and the downright puzzling.

Jeremy Allen White, it must be said, doesn’t look an awful lot like Springsteen, but still manages to portray the man with absolute conviction and, perhaps more importantly, he captures the Boss’s distinctive voice with evident skill. Strong is an exceptional performer and makes the softly-spoken, nurturing approach of Landau interesting to observe. The man clearly had the patience of a saint.

But the female performers are less well-served. Gaby Hoffman, as Bruce’s mum, Adele, and Grace Gummer as Landau’s wife, Barbara, are granted barely enough dialogue to justify their presence. Elsewhere, we witness Bruce’s on-off romance with waitress Faye Romano (Odessa Young), a fictional character who is a composite of several girlfriends he had around this time. Young does her best with what’s she given which is, to be honest, nowhere near enough.

There’s a frankly exasperating moment where Bruce is finally about to unburden himself to a psychiatrist, to explain exactly what’s been haunting him all these years… only for the camera to suddenly cut away, leaving the audience literally in the dark. On the plus side, there are a couple of upbeat scenes set in New Jersey club, The Stone Pony, that celebrate the energy and excitement of the early 80s rock scene. And a recreation of the original recording session for the song Born in the USA, is a definite high point.

But too often, Deliver Me From Nowhere struggles to justify its considerable running time. Hardcore Springsteen fans will find enough elements here to pique their interest but those with only a passing knowledge of the man and his work may soon start running out of patience.

3.4 stars

Philip Caveney

A Complete Unknown

17/01/25

Cineworld, Edinburgh

Writer/director James Mangold has been down the music biopic route before with 2005’s Walk The Line (featuring Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash), but the news that he was planning a film about Bob Dylan felt like a decidedly tall order. After all, Robert Zimmerman is the proverbial mystery wrapped up in an enigma, a man who has unabashedly invented (and reinvented) the details of his own story from the very start of his career. It’s to Mangold’s credit then, that A Complete Unknown is such a triumph, eschewing the idea of a ‘whole life’ depiction and choosing instead to focus on five turbulent years from the musician’s life.

it’s 1961 and a twenty-year-old Dylan hitchhikes from his home in Duluth, Minnesota to Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey, where folk legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairie) is slowly succumbing to the ravages of Huntingdon’s Disease. Guthrie is Dylan’s hero and he has come here to sing to him, as song he’s written all about the man. Present at the impromptu performance is Guthrie’s friend and fellow folk stalwart, Pete Seeger (Edward Norton). He’s impressed both by the song and the performer’s confidence, so he takes Dylan under his wing and starts introducing him to the flourishing folk scene in the coffee houses of New York City.

It isn’t long before his regular appearances start to gain him a reputation. At one concert he meets Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning, a thinly disguised version of Dylan’s real life muse, the late Suze Rotolo), and the two of them become lovers and constant companions. He also meets folk singer Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), already something of a star on the folk circuit. Baez covers some of Dylan’s songs and helps to bring his work to a wider audience, and inevitably, a romantic entanglement ensues between them.

And then, Dylan begins to tire of the strictures of the folk scene and finds himself increasingly drawn to the trappings of rock music – the fashions, the poses, the volume. But he is to discover that folk puritans are opposed to sullying ‘their’ music with electric guitars and keyboards. It becomes clear that the transition won’t be an easy one to make…

These days, I am by no means a Bob Dylan fan, but I did follow him during the mid sixties and have always held a soft spot for Highway 61 Revisited – which, coincidentally, is the album around which this film reaches its climax. In the lead role Timothée Chalamet is quite simply astonishing, offering a performance that goes beyond the realms of mere impersonation. He actually performs all the songs and plays guitar on them. (A post screening Q & A tells me that he didn’t play the instrument before this film, but had the opportunity to work on his character for five years and figured he might as well go all-in). Co-star Barbaro had barely sung a note before she landed the role of Joan Baez, but she somehow nails the woman’s unique vocal style effortlessly.

And then of course, there are the songs, each one indelibly memorable and delivered with enhanced power at this IMAX screening, so that the film’s two hour plus running time seems to positively flash by. Dylan, as portrayed by Chalamet, is a whole contradiction of characters, by turns vulnerable, scheming, hard bitten and amorous, sneering, vindictive, reckless and determined. Of course, Chalamet has been nominated for an Oscar and, should he be successful, then it will be well-earned.

A Complete Unknown is a remarkable achievement, a film that captures the era in which it’s set with absolute veracity and which chooses to focus on one of the most important moments in music history. It’s fascinating to watch it unfold. (Okay, so a few small details have been tweaked – that infamous cry of ‘Judas!’ occurred at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, not the Newport Folk Festival, but it matters not one jot.) This is a movie to enjoy on the big screen with the best sound system available. After the recent financial failure of the brilliant Better Man, I’m reluctant to speculate on what this film might achieve at the box office, but for my money, it ticks all the boxes.

It’s a musical feast. Dig in.

5 stars

Philip Caveney