‘Road Diary’ Review: Bruce Springsteen and Thom Zimny Take Us on Another Intimate Journey with the E Street Band
We’re not exactly starved for documentary content revolving around Bruce Springsteen and his E Street Band, but that doesn’t mean the continued chronicles (and chronicling) of The Boss and America’s most enduring rock band don’t remain welcome entries in the nonfiction world. The latest true-life look at the Boss in this particular moment is directed by “The Promise: The Making of the Darkness on the Edge of Town,” “Springsteen on Broadway,” and many (many) Springsteen music videos filmmaker Thom Zimny, who continues to evolve his vision of Springsteen alongside the seminal American icon.
And if all those fawning words — “most enduring,” “seminal,” “icon” — don’t make it clear enough: this critic is very much a Springsteen fan, but that is not required to enjoy Springsteen and Zimny’s latest offering, “Road Diary.” While ostensibly focused on the band coming back to touring after nearly seven years off the stage (a break mostly foisted on them by the pandemic), Zimny’s film also weaves in early stories about Bruce and the band that help contextualize them and their history for neophytes. A later in the film series of interviews with super-fans positively beaming about attending a Bruce show also add to the sense that Zimny is framing this in such a way to further sell the band’s importance in the world of music and live performing.
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And yet’s that all less essential than the real meat of the film: simply watching Bruce and the band perform in packed stadiums and tiny black box theaters. That alone will do it. That alone will sell the history. That alone will forecast the future.
When the E Street Band got back on the road in 2023, they hadn’t performed to large crowds in almost seven years. Many of them had not been in a room together since late 2019, when they recorded their album “Letter to You.” And while there’s plenty of pleasure to be found in watching the group shake off the dust in early rehearsals, it’s all building to what will really satisfy Bruce fans, new and old and just discovering their fandom: taking it out to the people.
But this is not just another concert documentary, and as Springsteen — who is also the film’s sole credited screenwriter and often guides us through by way of a familiar, gravelly voiceover — repeatedly tells us, this was not just another tour. That’s not just because of the timing of it or the very real concerns about how hard it is (physically, mentally, emotionally) to keep doing this night after night at age 73, even though that’s all there too, but because of the story Springsteen wanted to tell with the tour, down to every detail.
As the film lovingly explains, prior E Street Band shows — even the massive stadium ones — tended to be free-wheeling affairs, with an ever-changing set list, plenty of called audibles, even fan requests eventually deigned to “stump the band” with their deep cuts. But for the 2023 – 2024 tour (yes, it’s still going on today; Springsteen and other members of the band jetted to Toronto for the film’s premiere on Sunday night after playing Washington D.C. the night before), Springsteen basically arrived at rehearsals with a prescribed set list. He didn’t want to mix it up, he wanted to tell a story.
For those who saw the tour (ahem, and sorry), the thrust of that story is clear: laced through with four songs from the intensely reflective “Letter to You,” the tour was about looking back at Bruce and the band’s earliest history, and contextualizing it through the gaze of classic hits (“Born to Run,” “Badlands,” “The Promised Land”). All of this, one talking head (Zimny has most of the band on rotation to chat, plus wonderful archival footage of dearly departed members Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici) explains, isn’t so much about being dour or sad, it’s about embracing a spirit of resistance and originality that has always marked their output.
While the structure of the doc can occasionally confuse, with Zimny weaving back and forth so much in time that it’s often not always clear what period of time people are really talking about, that might be a feature much more than a bug. That’s the story Bruce and the band are trying to tell: how much things have stayed the same, even as they’ve changed. It’s not the sexiest story, but it is the most true, and the one Springsteen seems most driven to share these days.
The best Springsteen songs sound as if they’ve pulled directly from his diary, and while this “Road Diary” might have a bit more polish and gloss, it’s more than worth the read and the ride.
Grade: B
“Road Diary” premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. It will start streaming on Hulu and Disney+ on Friday, October 25.
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