unvarnished

Like Cooper, Springsteen himself had long resisted biopics, wary of anything artificial, but the director’s unvarnished films, particularly “Crazy Heart,” “Hostiles” and “Out of the Furnace,” resonated deeply with him.

With a sprawling live band and big moments of unvarnished vocal candor, this was pop at its highest caliber, but with an eye toward long-term durability and integrity.

It took courage for these veterans to go on camera and offer the unvarnished truth about the disastrous wars they helped to fight.

“I think there’s something viewers appreciate about the unvarnished part of it,” O’Brian said.

What emerges is an unvarnished chronicle: flashes of vision and vulnerability, spectacle and self-destruction, all captured through the lens of a young cameraman embedded in Ye’s orbit.