The boredom that set in during my watch of Bradley Cooper’s retread of A Star Is Born came after the first hour or so, when our heroes have well fallen in love and the script, co-written by Eric Roth and Will Fetters with Cooper, must decide what will jeopardize paradise. That first leg of Cooper’s directorial debut, though, is well edited, with Cooper and Lady Gaga having a certain ease and collective charisma with one another onscreen that is appealing.
The film begins aurally. A stadium crowd clamors for a drunken Jackson Maine (Cooper), a not-quite-country singer whose demeanor suggests a lost Allman brother. We hear the crowd meld with the ringing in Maine’s ear. Like many rockers, he has a hearing problem (except his apparently dates back to childhood?). Already we feel like we’ve been here before with Jeff Bridges’ turn in Crazy Heart, a better movie in some respects. Cooper’s camera keeps us on the stage. The point-of-view character is not Jackson or his love, Ally (Gaga), rather, it’s The Performer.
After being dunked into what Maine’s life is like — drink, perform, stumble on to the next town — we meet Gaga’s Ally in a hilariously large bathroom at her job, some kind of banquet hall or large restaurant. Chambered in a stall, she argues with some boyfriend who clumsily proposes marriage over the phone. Ally wisely breaks up with him. Then she walks to the center of the room and engages in a primal scream. Gaga gives Ally a self-assurance that sometimes almost becomes a tough-guy sneer. When she’s not hauling garbage in food service, she’s an aspiring singer who performs in a drag queen bar, the only cis-woman so honored, we’re told. All this is handled more or less with directorial alacrity. Cooper is a careful director, backing his way into painterly shots without being too precious.
Maine leaves a gig and instructs his loyal driver to find a bar. When he finds it to be a drag queen spot, he reacts with vaguely woke equanimity. Hey, they serve booze, says his body language. Jackson is recognized by Ally’s friend (Anthony Ramos) who announces that his pal from work will perform presently. Drink in hand, Jackson is riveted by Ally Gaga’s table-walking rendition of “La Vie en Rose.” Shuffling through a thicket of starstruck drag queens — Maine signing a set of fake breasts is one of many cheap laughs had at a drag performers’ expense — he finally meets Ally, who is self-confident as a person, self-possessed as a performer, but somehow freighted with self-doubt as a songwriter. They flirt and are immediately off on an impromptu first date.
To my surprise, I bought the central relationship here. Cooper and Gaga engage in the sort of drunken-first-date banter that is realistic in its inanity. The over-share and over-praise one another. Although in every scene, someone eventually outright states the point of the scene, with dialogue stuffed with character backstory. Maine eventually has his driver stalk Ally, waiting outside her family home, where she lives with Andrew Dice Clay who plays her dad, to deliver her to Jackson’s next gig. In one of many twists we see coming a country mile away, their post-gig consummation is postponed due to Jackson passing out drunk. He is tucked in by another trusted handler, played by Sam Elliot, who, though used sparingly, is fiery with unspoken emotion and utterly believable.
Once the story shifts, as it must in every A Star Is Born iteration, from two artists falling in love to two artists dealing with the tribulations of their relationship in the context of one partner’s growing fame, Cooper loses the tight control that characterized the first third of the film. Where once the editing was impressionistic and judicious, things become tedious and long-winded. Whole conversations with side characters delivering minor background information are handled as if they carry essential information. As the eternal story wears on, and Ally goes from viral sensation to Grammy-nominated pop star, Cooper becomes too indulgent. The characters tend to say exactly what’s on their minds in a way that grows into stale predictability.
We already know she can sing, and in A Star Is Born she does so beautifully. (Cooper, on the other hand, is not a professional singer, which is evident not in the notes he hits or doesn’t hit but in the professional-musician confidence that his voice lacks. E.g., Gosling in La La Land.) But Gaga achieves a naturalism in the non-singing scenes that is, in fact, the thing that made me believe her as Ally. Gaga’s best acting moments are those when Ally is worked up about something, joking around in bar early on or becoming angry with Jackson while she soaks in a bath. You only see her acting in the smaller, quieter moments, particularly early on, wherein there’s no extreme emotion happening, just conversing at work, etc.
The film gives so much backstory to Jackson and Ally that other questions that pop up go unaddressed. Ally appears to be a tri-state area chick who performs in drag bars, whereas Jackson is a country-rock fusion singer from Arizona who wears a cowboy hat (although not onstage) and speaks with a low, rumbling twang. Do they share the same values? Additionally, would not their musical tastes not quite aligning be more of a problem, at the very least, a conversation? Such practical questions, the film seems tacitly to argue, are rendered moot when two people are “in love.”
The effect for which the film is shooting is one of alternately swooning and crying. But I found the second half of A Star Is Born to be maudlin. Cooper elongates the sad scenes with such melodramatic deliberateness that one feels almost assaulted. And with the exception of a tune called “Shallow,” the songs, some of which co-written by Cooper himself, are lyrically underwhelming. Of course, the Academy likes swooning and star-making and actors directing. The Oscar swamis have predicted that this thing will clean house on the awards circuit. The best thing one can say this time of year is that the Academy could do worse. Perhaps they will.
A Star Is Born — TWO STARS
Directed by Bradley Cooper
Rated R
Warner Bros.
137 min.
Lewis On Film 