In recent years, movie screens have been invaded by an endless parade of biopics about popular 20th-century singers. Along with them came the same recurring stories of a rise and fall, origin stories about individuals destined for greatness despite hardship and misfortune. For every spectacle with a recognizable director’s vision (Elvis, Rocketman), you find a middle-of-the-road “greatest hits” portrait with nothing profound to add (the abysmal Bohemian Rhapsody, the slightly better Get on Up!). Almost all of them follow the blueprint that was Walk the Line, the dramatically efficient Johnny Cash biopic directed by James Mangold. This year brings the biopic Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, about an artist with a musically rich and vast body of work, yet perhaps one of the least scandalous celebrities. Because of this, there’s graceful room for a quieter, more melancholic approach.

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere doesn’t explore the moments leading up to his fame and the construction of his myth (as A Complete Unknown did with Bob Dylan last year). Instead, it focuses on a self-contained episode, with Springsteen already famous and recognized, though still a couple of years away from becoming a lasting global superstar. Directed by Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart) and based on Warren Zanes’s book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, the film centers on Springsteen’s inner turmoil that led him to create one of the best and most unexpected albums of his career.

Jeremy Allen White plays Springsteen with a subdued, boy-next-door charm and underlying sadness. It’s 1981, so his most recent album is The River, released a year earlier (with the hit “Hungry Heart,” his first Top 10 single). In the opening scenes, Springsteen is in rock-star mode, playing guitar mid-jump, entertaining hundreds at a concert during a rendition of the anthemic “Born to Run.” Less exhausted and with more joy on his face, we later see him as a backing musician for another act at the Stone Pony, the still-standing Asbury Park bar he continues to frequent to this day. His life back in New Jersey is relatively calm, though deeply isolated.

Meanwhile, the record-label executives discuss the singer’s future with Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong, whose mannered performance shows all the gears turning), Springsteen’s manager and record producer. They’re convinced the next step will elevate his stardom and their bank accounts. Their instincts aren’t entirely wrong, since the inevitable album Born in the U.S.A. will be released in a couple of years. But they don’t realize that before reaching that kind of artistic and commercial glory, Springsteen needs to prepare spiritually. This is something the musician perhaps recognized intuitively through the creation of Nebraska. In a refreshing way, Cooper’s movie serves as a philosophical distinction between why some are artists and others are businessmen. And sometimes, with a clear mind and soul, the artist knows better. Lucky for Springsteen, he had a sensitive manager who understood this.

Nebraska was a bold move: a downbeat folk album with no singles, no promo, and no Springsteen on the cover, released almost exactly as it was recorded at home with rudimentary technology. Cooper’s film, focusing on the creation of that album, is far from unorthodox, instead relying on a rigorous storyline about overcoming depression though without an underlying mystery. Still, it’s a disarming look at a struggling artist who happens to be one of the most famous music icons. White, in his first real shot at movie stardom, assumes the role with tender vulnerability and introspection. A few required tropes aside (the failed romance, monochromatic flashbacks), the movie is clearly more interested in the music and in how an artist seeks to express the unfathomable. Every piece we hear is haunting and revealing, including an early take of the song “Born in the U.S.A.”

Not many spectacular events occur, but there’s something rewarding in seeing a musical biopic with more restraint and extreme affection for how music is created. There’s no story of drug addiction, of a subject under the control of managers or other authority figures exploiting him, or of a romance feeding self-destructive behavior. Instead, a composer confronts existential shadows and sorrows through music that isn’t what the audience expects.

But don’t worry—you’ll still get plenty of unresolved childhood trauma (Springsteen’s alcoholic father, who was abusive toward him and his mother) and the required “die for your art” ethos that sustains most of these tales. Hollywood finds a way to turn a star into a martyr of the arts, even if he’s one of the most well-behaved guys in the music industry. Only this time, the artist got the timing right, knowing when to go his own way and recognizing during his solitary journey that outside help was ultimately needed. There are limits to what sublimation through art can actually achieve.