Movie Review—A Star Is Born

Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O'Connell

A Star Is Born. Released: Oct. 2018. Runtime: 135 mins. MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, some sexuality/nudity and substance abuse.

A Star Is Born is a romantic drama with music whose core story has become classic, with three iterations (1937, Janet Gaynor and Frederic March; 1954, Judy Garland and James Mason; 1976, Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson) in the 70 years preceding the current version. This fourth version is directed, co-written, and co-produced by Bradley Cooper, who also co-stars.

The “human astronomy” of A Star Is Born tracks the intersecting trajectories of a relationship and two careers. The relationship is that of Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) and Ally (Lady Gaga). When the movie begins, Jackson's career as a singer is near its zenith; that of Ally, also a singer, hasn't gotten off the ground. Ally's relationship with Jackson will change all that. 

In the tradition of movie romances, Jackson and Ally “meet cute.” After performing at a sold-out concert, Jackson, who has a drinking and drug problem that he hides from the public, stops off to imbibe at what, by chance, turns out to be a “drag queen” bar. There he witnesses Ally singing the classic French song “La Vie En Rose.” 

Ally works as a waitress at a catering hall and moonlights as a singer whenever she can, but she is about to abandon her hopes for success in show business because, as she tells Jackson, “almost every single person that I've come in contact with in the music industry has told me that my nose is too big and that I won't make it.”

Jackson is impressed with Ally's singing and persuades her to spend the rest of the night barhopping with him. And he tells her: “Your nose is beautiful . . . . Oh, I'm going to be thinking about your nose for a very long time.” In the course of the evening, Ally also punches out a guy in a “cop bar.” 

Taken with Ally's mix of feistiness and vulnerability, Jackson offers to fly her to his next concert. After some initial hesitation, Ally quits her job and goes to the concert. She doesn't just watch Jackson perform, she accepts his offer to join him on stage in a duet of a song that she has written. Videos of their performance go viral, and Ally's career starts to soar as she joins Jackson in his tours of the country. Their relationship deepens from “friendship with benefits” to true love.

Jackson finds it hard to overcome his drug and drink demons, though, and relies a lot on his manager/older brother, Bobby (the ever-estimable Sam Elliott). Bobby tells Ally that she has brought Jackson to the peak of his performing power, but she needs to be “careful around him.” 

It seems that the late father of Jackson and Bobby was an abusive alcoholic, whose bad influence Jackson finds hard to shake off. By contrast, Ally has a warm relationship with her own father, Lorenzo (Andrew Dice Clay). At the beginning of the movie, Ally lived with her father and his friends, who all work together as part of a driving service. Lorenzo and company function as a kind of Greek chorus in the film, commenting on developments. 

Developments start to become dark. Though the trajectory of the Jackson/Ally relationship peaks when the two wed, with a guitar string as the wedding ring, the marriage starts becoming troubled as Jackson has difficulty dealing with the steady rise of Ally's career, while his starts to decline under the pull of his demons. Jackson's fall (literal as well as metaphorical) is heartwrenching to watch, and the story's reputation for being a tearjerker is well earned in this version's third act. 

At one point, Bobby says: “Music is essentially 12 notes between any octave—12 notes and the octave repeat. It's the same story told over and over, forever. All any artist can offer the world is how they see those 12 notes. That's it.” Although the current A Star Is Born may, in its essence, have been a thrice-told tale when its makers started working on it, “how they saw it” brings the world of 2018 to that tale in a convincing way. 

The performances of Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper are so convincing as to be compelling. Each star holds power in reserve along the spectrum from lightheartedness to heartbreak until just the right moment to express just the right emotion to just the right degree in just the right way. Bravo to both! 

And Bradley Cooper deserves a special hat tip for wearing so many “hats” in this production. It's astonishing that Cooper was able to direct the movie so well while also performing his own role so well—with a script (and some songs) that he helped write. 

Lady Gaga and Cooper do all the singing in the film themselves. The songs are almost all original to this version of A Star Is Born and are quite good. And the music is seamlessly integrated into the story.    

“Footnote” to the film: The dialogue about Ally's nose was not in previous versions of A Star Is Born, but both Barbra Streisand and Lady Gaga herself when they started their careers in show business were told that their noses were “too big.”