In Review: ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,’ ‘Bugonia’

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Dir. Scott Cooper
119 min.

Laid down on a four-track recorder in the bedroom of a rented home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, the spare, intimate, disquieting Nebraska remains perhaps the most “Dewey Cox has to think about his whole life before he plays” album in Bruce Springsteen’s discography. That makes it ripe for the clunky literalism that plagues a high percentage of music biopics, and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere leans into those clichés more than it should. The children playing on the road that leads to those gates of hardened steel to the “Mansion on the Hill”? It would appear, via black-and-white flashback, that Springsteen was one of those children. And while Springsteen has talked about driving at night by the Freehold, New Jersey home of his youth, where he had a rocky relationship with his troubled dad, “My Father’s House” gets an entire dramatic arc. 

The most unfortunate stretches of Deliver Me From Nowhere suffer from the Rosebud-ification of Springsteen’s life, when music so indelibly evocative and mysterious gets reduced to some bluntly tangible moment out of time. The film also commits the biopic sin of needing characters to explain the self-evident genius of what the audience is already experiencing, like scenes where Springsteen’s loyal manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) talks Nebraska to his wife like he’s excerpting his own Rolling Stone review. (Though Landau’s own past as a music critic forgives that impulse a little.) The story behind the recording of this audacious, landmark album is absolutely fascinating, and the film gets into those details, too, to compelling effect. It just tries to tell too much. 

Having played another kind of haunted, volatile artist as a chef in The Bear, Jeremy Allen White slips into the Springsteen role seamlessly, giving a performance that imitates The Boss’ rasp and posture while tapping into his stormy interiority. Opening at the end of a long concert tour promoting The River with the E Street Band, Deliver Me From Nowhere follows Springsteen back to his lonely home in Colts Neck, where he’s having a particularly hard time decompressing. While the suits at his record label are eager for him to capitalize on the hit “Hungry Heart,” his songwriting is taking creative inputs from darker sources, including the heartland crime movie Badlands and memories from a childhood where he and his mother (Gaby Hoffman) had to contend with his troubled working-class brute (Stephen Graham) of a father. He also embarks on a romantic relationship with a single mother (Odessa Young) who discovers, all too predictably, that he’s emotionally unavailable.

Working from Warren Zanes’ book, writer-director Scott Cooper treats the Springsteen story with the lugubriousness that marred his 2009 music drama Crazy Heart, which wasn’t about real folkie but followed the same script of an authentic genius out of step with the mainstream. Yet whenever the subplots and flashbacks in Deliver Me From Nowhere fall away and the actual recording of Nebraska takes shape, the film flickers to life. Just the finicky issue of dealing with the multi-track recorder and then trying to reproduce that sound on vinyl is an artistic and technical quandary that could be a movie in itself, combined with the heavy expectations of a label that doesn’t want what Springsteen has opted to give them. Cooper leans toward a chronicle of Springsteen’s depression, which makes sense given his emotional state at the time, but too much of the film is explained when it’s better dramatized. The act of turning angst into music is more dynamic than finding every source for it. — Scott Tobias

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere opens tonight in theaters everywhere, including those in Nebraska.

Bugonia
Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos
118 min.

The sort of man who boasts of doing his own research and never getting “his news from the news,” Teddy (Jesse Plemons) lives a fringe existence somewhere on the rural outskirts of an unnamed American city. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have plans. While others remain blissfully unaware, Teddy sees a pattern in the alarming rise of ecological crises like colony collapse disorder—he’s a hobbyist beekeeper. His conclusion: all evidence points toward the presence of an alien species known as the Andromedans. If humanity is to be saved, Teddy knows he has to act fast, before the next lunar eclipse in fact. Conveniently, Teddy recognizes Michelle Fuller (Emma Stone), the celebrated CEO of a pharmaceutical company based nearby, as a key figure in the Andromedan conspiracy. Kidnapping her, with the help of his childlike cousin Donny (Aidan Delbis), will be step one. Step two: Shaving her head so she can’t communicate with others from her planet. Step three: Well, Teddy he seems a little unclear about step three.

Adapted from Jang Joon-hwan’s 2003 film Save the Green Planet! and scripted by Will Tracy (The Menu), the latest from Yorgos Lanthimos plays to the director’s strengths, allowing him to fold black comedy and social commentary into some deeply uncomfortable and increasingly absurd situations. The question that might ordinarily be at the heart of the film never really seems to be a question at all. Teddy’s theories are obviously the fevered imaginings of a madman. (Right?) The film introduces Michelle as a no-nonsense executive who’s mastered a specialized sort of seemingly compassionate doublespeak. Due to some past issues, she’s introduced a new policy removing any expectation that employees work beyond their allotted hours. Unless, of course, they feel like they really have to. She seems like a fundamentally nasty person beneath her smile. But an alien from Andromeda with designs on Earth? That’s silly.

Yet, even more than in 2003, it’s easy to imagine someone like Teddy buying into and acting upon this sort of conspiratorial thinking, even before we learn the full backstory of why Michelle in particular has drawn his ire. (If anything, it’s surprising he only won Donny to his side.) Much of Bugonia takes the form of a battle of wills, if not wits, between Michelle and her captors as she alternately forcefully denies Teddy’s accusations then tries to use them to her advantage. In the process, the film slowly reveals a bit about their shared past as both the tension and awkwardness mount. The film’s comic highlight comes in the form of a dinner scene in which Teddy tries to play the part of the gracious host while making clear that he’s taking that looming deadline quite seriously.

The hostage situation recalls The Killing of a Sacred Deer, but Bugonia ultimately ends up feeling more akin to Dogtooth, as Teddy’s home becomes a place governed by a logic that’s alien to the outside world. As Michelle’s attempts to escape fail, she becomes increasingly subject to a reality governed by Teddy’s beliefs and the real threat of violence beneath his seemingly sweet demeanor. Stone and Plemons prove well-matched, aided by strong supporting work from Delbis and, as a police officer who has his own history with Teddy, comedian Stavros Halkias. At once uncomfortable and compelling, Bugonia builds toward a wild and misanthropic final act that plays like nothing less than a sincere rejection of humanity itself. By that point, Lanthimos has kind of made it feel like we have it coming. —Keith Phipps

Chicago: Join us at the Davis Theater tonight for a special screening of Under the Skin. Tickets can be purchased here.