‘Road Diary’ underscores reasons to worship at the altar of Springsteen

“Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” — 3.5 stars

The new documentary “Road Diary: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band” is for the true believers, if only because faith is the central tenet of every Springsteen fan. Faith in the Boss — his decency, his groove, his dedication to a half-century of bringing it — but also faith in the struggles and resilience of the ordinary person, and faith in rock ’n’ roll as a generation’s holiest form of transcendence.

Bruce embodies all that, rises above it and shares it with us at the same time, and the reason he’s exalted by millions is that he addresses the matter with gravity and articulate grace — and then blows the roof off with music.

He doesn’t do it alone, of course, and “Road Diary” is as much a celebration of the E Street Band, its graying members and its ghosts, as of Springsteen himself. Directed by Thom Zimny, who’s been making videos and concert films for the musician since 2001’s “Live in New York City,” and edited, at times thrillingly, by Samuel Shapiro, the film covers the E Street Band’s post-pandemic tour of 2023-2025 — the group’s first live shows in six years — pointedly ignoring the attendant ticket-pricing controversies and emphasizing the brotherhood (and sisterhood) of the road.

The core band remains largely intact after 50 years, and as rehearsals begin in January 2023, “Road Diary” gives the E Streeters lots of face time to reminisce and address the passing of the decades. Keyboardist Roy Bittan, bassist Garry Tallent, drummer Max Weinberg, guitarist Miami Steven Van Zandt and guitarist Nils Lofgren — the “new kid” with only 40 years in the band — are aware they carry a heavy load of expectations. Tallent says that “the only thing we have to fear is destroying the legacy we’ve made so far,” and while he’s laughing, he’s not exactly kidding.

Springsteen eulogizes the two band members who have died, keyboard player Danny Federici in 2008 and saxophonist Clarence Clemons in 2011. Of the latter, he says, “We were different parts of the same spiritual body,” and Clemons’s replacement onstage by nephew Jake Clemons testifies to his continued presence. Springsteen’s wife, singer-guitarist Patti Scialfa, uses “Road Diary” to reveal her 2018 diagnosis of multiple myeloma, whose effect on her immune system keeps her mostly off the concert stage; we still get to see her and Bruce duet on “Fire,” a Romeo and Juliet for the AARP set.

The meat of Zimny’s documentary, of course, is the live numbers, bound together in a set list that allows Springsteen to “communicate the story you are trying to tell your audience this time around [and] let them know who I am at this point in my work life.” The omissions are more surprising than the songs included — no “Born in the U.S.A.,” for one thing, and “Born to Run” isn’t in the original lineup, although we hear a snippet late in the film.

The story Springsteen wants to tell is one of time’s continuum, the joys and pains of early days and the wisdom and regrets of autumn. The archival footage of 1970s Bruce and band in full roar at tiny clubs and midsize arenas is revelatory — can Zimny make an entire documentary of this, please? — and the new song “Last Man Standing,” from 2020’s “Letter to You” album, becomes a memorial to the musician’s first group, the Castiles, of whom he’s the only surviving member.

Because the audience call-and-response is at least half the experience of a Springsteen tour, “Road Diary” trains its cameras out in the seats, and it’s there you see the faith his fans bring to the show and the faith that’s rewarded. The film builds in urgency and ecstasy to finally arrive at “Backstreets,” with Shapiro’s edits welding the crowd and the band into one as the intro crests and that titanic beat kicks in.

Here’s why Springsteen matters: He came along at a time when the glorious release promised by early rock ’n’ roll — from Elvis through the Beatles — had turned overblown and decadent in the early 1970s. There were two ways to respond, with the nihilism of punk or the romanticism of what Bruce did, returning to the roots of the music and reimagining it in epic widescreen color. That he did so with sincerity and not a trace of irony (except for “Born in the U.S.A.,” which is why that song is misunderstood by dunderheaded patriots) gives him little traction with a lot of Gen Z listeners, for whom irony is oxygen, while rendering him sacrosanct, even necessary, for their elders.

Of whom the singer counts himself as one, a fan who somehow ended up being the guy onstage. Springsteen is no longer the shaggy rock prophet of the early days — if anything, he now looks like the world’s sexiest retired pipe fitter — and he allows himself a little working man’s philosophy (or the wealthy rock star’s version of same) when he speaks onstage of “death’s final and lasting gift to the living [being] an expanded vision of life itself.”

Too heavy? The man’s earned it, and so have we. And, at the end of the day, the music is what matters, played loud and live as it should be. “That’s the beating heart of my job,” Springsteen says of his concerts and what they give his fans, “to be there and only there.”

It’s hard to be a saint in the city, but “Road Diary” reminds us why it’s worth it.

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Available on Hulu and Disney+. Unrated. 99 minutes.