There’s a very specific kind of Hollywood epic melodrama that A Star is Born is conjuring, one that used to dominate theaters with its starpower and saccharine plot construction. It is, of course, the fourth version of this particular story, and when we get to this point, building upon archetypes is the name of the game, so it’s redundant to say that the third remake of a movie is too derivative, but what else is there to say? We have a movie star like Bradley Cooper pulling double duty, directing as well as starring in the film. In a stroke of genius, Lady Gaga is cast in the central role, a waitress named Ally who’s discovered by Cooper’s rock star, Jackson Maine, in a drag bar and turned into a pop music force in her own right. The film is about rising and falling, the thrilling ascent before the crushing downfall. We know the destination, but A Star is Born is about the journey.
Cooper’s Jackson Maine is a grumbling, pill-popping alcoholic suffering from near-debilitating tinnitus. The only reason he gets to see Ally sing is because she just so happened to be performing at the closest bar Jackson could enter. His interest in her is sincere, he recognizes her talent as a singer, but more than anything he can tell that she has something to say. To Jackson, that’s the difference between having talent and finding success with it. Audiences will connect with an artist if their voice is pure and true. Ally writes songs, but doesn’t have the confidence to perform them. She’s often been told that she’s not pretty enough to make it in the music industry. Even her father, Lorenzo (a very economical use of Andrew Dice Clay), a former crooner himself, openly remarks that some people have the gift, but success comes with also having the look.
Jackson finds Ally beautiful, or at the very least he doesn’t find her looks detract in any way from her abilities, which is what he finds most attractive about her. In the film’s most effective sequence, Jackson convinces Ally to join him onstage, in front of a packed arena, to perform one of her songs. The song (“Shallow”) is a catchy, anthemic piece of arena rock that turns into a viral video on YouTube and makes Ally an overnight sensation. Falling in love, Jackson and Ally inspire each other’s better creative impulses, and introduces an onstage chemistry that audiences can’t get enough of. But Ally also becomes more acquainted with Jackson’s crippling addictions. As Ally’s star gets bigger and brighter, Jackson wants to protect her from the more onerous aspects of the music business, which worries more about image building than the stark fact of her incredible voice.
But mentoring Ally through her newfound celebrity proves difficult as he slips further and further down into the depths of his vices. A Star is Born is a film about addiction, not only Jackson’s substance abuse, but also the seduction of Ally into the more corporate aspects of pop stardom. Fame becomes her addiction, and Jackson’s ego swells when it becomes clear that her fame may make his problems a liability. The film’s script (written by Cooper and Will Fetters, then polished by the veteran Eric Roth) toggles between the romantic view of Cooper’s troubled, beautiful addict artist, and a cynicism about the nature of addiction and its recurring place in Jackson’s life. Like a lot of things in the script, it’s more interested in narratives about addiction than about addiction itself.
As director, Cooper seems to be constructing his own piece of self-canonization, playing a self-destructive rock star for the ages in a way that suggests his stardom matches it. He is stamping himself with legitimacy, erasing his earlier days as the punchable schmuck in comedies like The Hangover (though not totally, as Hangover director Todd Philips shows up here as a producer). It sniffs of Tom Hanks making people forget about The Burbs with Philadelphia. It doesn’t distract him from filmmaking, of which I’d describe as somewhere between David O. Russell and The Last Waltz. But Cooper’s performance scratches through dialogue like Christian Bale’s Batman, often sounding like someone who just landed off the red-eye from Las Vegas. It’s a solid piece of acting, but one that requires more of him as a musician than anything else, and the problem is that we know that Cooper is capable of something more.
In his one-on-one scenes with Gaga as well as Sam Elliot (who is very good as a much-older brother and oftentimes babysitter), we get glimpses of a real person there, but otherwise we’re getting some standard superstar myopia, all stumbling and bumbling, without any of the charm from his scenes with Ally. As Ally, Lady Gaga shows her chops. I’m about as unacquainted with the Lady Gaga phenomenon as one can be, only knowing a handful of songs, one entertaining Super Bowl halftime show, and a Golden Globes acceptance speech (for American Horror Story) that – I must confess – I mocked for its earnest sincerity. But her performance here is the best thing about A Star is Born, and unlike Cooper, it goes well beyond her ability to perform on the stage, which is obvious in its own right.
The performance is vulnerable, charming and heartbreaking at all the right moments, and because she’s been a pop star for so long, she has a preternatural understanding of how the way you sing a song can greatly affect the way it plays. I’m not familiar enough with her as a person to know how closely Ally’s career trajectory mirrors her own, but the singer-turned-actress has an effortless quality in this person’s skin, making her meteoric rise very easy to root for. But for a movie that puts so much stock into artists having “something to say”, I had a very tough time trying to figure out what exactly A Star is Born was trying to say, outside “being famous is more fun than not being famous” and “being an addict isn’t great”. For those familiar with the earlier versions, we know the end presents an incredible tragedy, and I’m not sure this film earns it. There’s a bit too much borrowed here for its voice to be unique, so it instead it puts the onus on its stars to carry the load. For many, that may just be enough.
Directed by Bradley Cooper