It's a fascinating attempt to re-create a creative process

['Springsteen,' from E1] “The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White hunches into leather jackets and flannels, dark curls coquettishly kissing his brow, in order to embody Springsteen on screen.

- Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.

As with most musical biopics these days, the audience has to enter into an agreement with the film, suspending disbelief. Does White disappear into the role? Does he look exactly like Springsteen? No. But he’s the symbol of Springsteen here, and he captures the star's flinty gaze and rock ’n’ roll rasp while performing the songs, bringing his own intense soulfulness to the role.

Using Zane’s book, Cooper wants to present a study of the creative process and how isolating, transporting and transformative it can be to spill your guts and express something so personal that it becomes universal, as Springsteen did with “Nebraska.”

Holed up at a rental home in Colts Neck, N.J., in late 1981, Bruce has just finished a tour and is trying to readjust to the quiet, which is just too loud. He tries to take the edge off with nights at his hometown rock club, the Stone Pony, and a situationship with a fan, Faye (Odessa Young).

But his past haunts him, especially his childhood with an alcoholic, emotionally neglectful father (Stephen Graham) and a loving but turbulent mother (Gaby Hoffmann).