Last year, Timothée Chalamet, a respected young actor, starred as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, a film based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 nonfiction book, Dylan Goes Electric!, which centers on an important creative milestone in the iconic musician’s life as he struggles to figure out who he truly is. Now, The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White, another respected young actor, stars as Bruce Springsteen in Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, a film based on Warren Zanes’ 2023 nonfiction book, which centers on an important creative milestone in the iconic musician’s life as he struggles to figure out who he truly is. It premieres in theaters on October 24.

Wald’s book focuses, in part, on Dylan’s transition from folk music to a more rock-oriented style. Zanes’ work focuses on Springsteen’s creation of his 1982 album, Nebraska—a collection of dark, acoustic folk songs that starkly contrasted with his past rockers, such as “Born to Run” and “Hungry Heart.” Both books, and both film adaptations, address how the artists pushed back against expectations and how the musicians’ senses of identity were tied up in their creative processes and complicated by their celebrity.

Springsteen’s quest to find himself is made especially plain in the film, early on, when he buys a car at a dealership, circa 1981, and the salesman confides, “I know who you are.” “That makes one of us,” Springsteen drily replies. At the time, he planned to write and record some simple guitar-and-vocal demos on a four-track recorder at his isolated home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, with an eye toward crafting fuller arrangements with the E Street Band in a New York City studio. The songs that resulted, though, were nothing like the bar-band barnburners that made him famous; instead, they largely told spare, quiet stories of downhearted souls. A few tell tales of criminals, such as the title track, in which condemned spree killer Charles Starkweather reflects on “a meanness in this world,” and “Highway Patrolman,” in which a cop grapples with his feelings about his troubled, violent sibling: “when it’s your brother, / sometimes you look the other way.” Other songs offer wistful, conflicted reflections on childhood.

It’s a harrowing listen, but a revealing one. Two different songs, for instance, feature the line “Deliver me from nowhere,” which takes on additional meanings when one realizes that Springsteen was dealing with debilitating mental health issues, for which he would pursue therapy. In his Kirkus-starred 2016 memoir, Born to Run, he discusses his and his family’s struggles with depression over the years, detailing breakdowns at different points in his life.

Zanes, a former guitarist for the band The Del Fuegos and the author of a Kirkus-starred 2015 biography of rocker Tom Petty, focuses with some insight on the considerable artistry of Nebraska, but his unabashed admiration for Springsteen gives the book an unnecessarily hagiographic feel. In one section, without a hint of irony, he compares the Boss to the classical hero Odysseus and the artistic trajectory of Nebraska to Homer’s Odyssey. This sort of thing wears thin and keeps the reader from seeing Springsteen as anything resembling a mere mortal. Fortunately, the film goes out of its way to humanize its subject—showing him to be an extraordinarily talented and charismatic artist, of course, but also a regular guy with real problems.

This is due, in large part, to the casting of White. His take on the troubled Springsteen isn’t dissimilar to his work as the angst-ridden chef Carmy Berzatto of The Bear, but it suits this material surprisingly well. His performance lets viewers get to know the man on a deeply personal level—not as an icon but as someone simply looking for a way forward. White’s performances of Springsteen’s songs are also uncannily accurate, although one might wish that the film dwelled a bit more on the songs’ creations; only “Nebraska” gets this sort of attention. Still, as directed by Scott Cooper, it’s a consistently engaging watch, helped along by a fine supporting cast, including Succession’s Jeremy Strong as Jon Landau, Springsteen’s empathetic friend, manager, and confidant; Black Bird’s Paul Walter Hauser as guitar tech Mike Batlan, who helped record Nebraska, despite a lack of production expertise; and The Stand’s Odessa Young, who skillfully brings a fictional composite character to life: Faye Romano, a restaurant server and single mother with whom Springsteen has a brief but fraught relationship.

Overall, viewers looking for a celebration of the Boss’ music will certainly find it here; in addition to the Nebraska tracks, there are stirring renditions of “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.” But they’ll also find a compelling portrait of a man in crisis and a necessary paean to the very real benefits of therapy—a message that many other regular guys need to hear.

David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.