Lately, a new genre has emerged that undergoes the same transformation that the western experienced in the past, turned by the grace of the twilight of heroes into an anti-western. And so, what used to be a biopic is now an antibiopic. Thus, there is no biographical film to date whose main purpose is not to repeatedly deny the viewer the evidence that what they are seeing is exactly that: what they see. And so. It's okay, and we don't have to get upset about it, but an octopus as a pet causes problems. It doesn't leave hair on the couch, but it causes problems.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is a biopic. Nothing more, no matter how we look at it. Unlike others, it does not tell an entire life story, but its intention is the same as all of them: to glorify the existence (or a part of it) of the portrayed character. It is true that now, contrary to the universally accepted precept, the intention is to focus not on the brighter side, but precisely on the dark side of the force, where dragons, depressions, obsessions, and neuroses reside; where the body hurts and even life itself. The idea is simply to delve into the tortuous creation of a work of art, the album Nebraska with which Springsteen refuted himself at the peak of success, hinted at suicide, and bared himself to the world with a shining violence. The artist who emerged after such a cataclysm only engaged in interesting conversations with eternity.
Cooper revisits what he did so well in his previous work Crazy Heart. Now he swaps Jeff Bridges for Jeremy Allen White, but once again demonstrates a keen ear for broken voices, raw lives, hunched bodies, and complete songs (the latter being important). Additionally, it is not unnoticed that the temptation of the already achieved Oscar by Bridges (an actor who sings is hard to resist for the academics) still lingers. One must acknowledge the director's taste for a staging as tortured as it is transparent, as patient and calm as it is profound.
But then there is the more questionable part. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere exudes from beginning to end an aroma (at times stench) of hagiography that damages the film's foundational principle. The insistence on sanctifying every gesture of the protagonist beyond reason ruins the much-touted promise of the antibiopic being sold to us. Even the recourse (no matter how true) to the authoritarian father embodied with the usual forcefulness by Stephen Graham does not help us shake off the feeling that we are facing the same old story. In fact, the film grows and succeeds in presenting itself as something new when it barely bothers to outline or present the causes of the protagonist's turmoil. When this happens, Scott manages to firmly present his boldest and most interesting thesis: Springsteen sinks because, yes, life has no more meaning than sinking. But perhaps frightened by the unpopularity of such a brilliant and accurate thesis, he retreats and returns with the almost unbearable chant of childhood traumas. It is then when the creator's agony becomes lazy. It is then when one wonders how to walk an octopus.