Filmmaker Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, an adaptation of Warren Zanes’s book, opens on a sweaty, spent Bruce Springsteen in 1982 as he’s backstage, catching his breath after another herculean three-hour set, the kind that had already become legend on this tour.

Up to that point, Springsteen’s career had followed a jagged, uncertain climb. The River (1980) was his first No. 1 record; Born to Run (1975), despite its current ubiquity, had only moderate success upon release; and its follow-up, Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), fared even worse. The label’s romance with the blue-collar bard was beginning to fade.