Go For the Music

A Star Is Born a film by Bradley Cooper.  With Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, Dave Chappelle. ****

The first thing I should say is that—somewhat to my surprise—I liked this movie from beginning to end.  Bradley Cooper’s Jack was a warm and compelling character; the entire cast was great, including various surprising choices; I especially admired Cooper’s directorial debut (I kept remarking to myself as I watched that the directing was exceptional, without knowing it was Cooper who directed), and of course, as everyone says, Lady Gaga was marvelous.  I didn’t know her music before.  I’d hardly heard her sing.[1]

I hadn’t expected all that.  The trailer, which I’d seen several times, looked schmaltzy and overdone.  I’m not terribly interested in wealthy celebrities, which is what the characters in this movie become.  I’m sorry that fame is difficult and drives people to drink and use drugs, but poverty does the same thing.  I’ve never been able to stand Judy Garland, to be honest, though I shouldn’t hold that against this movie.  And as my friend Sally said when she e-mailed me about current movie choices (though I don’t think she had seen it), the story is dumb.  I agree.  I still thought the story was dumb this time around.  But the performances, and especially the music, overcame it.

The story, in case you’ve managed to avoid its various iterations, is that a famous drunken or drug addicted musician discovers a young woman singing in a small bar, is taken with her and her talent, starts her on a brilliant career, then becomes jealous and even more drunken and drug addicted as she surpasses him.  I have no doubt that such stories happen in real life.  The jealousy in celebrity marriages is famous and understandable, given the egos we’re dealing with.

What’s great about this movie is the way it navigates the clichés.  For one thing, all of the concert scenes—including the one that opens the film, and where we meet Jack (Cooper)—are absolutely thrilling.  They have the thrills of a live performance.  When he’s finished the booze in his limo and is looking far a bar where he can get more, he stumbles into a drag bar, where Ally (Lady Gaga) is singing, which doesn’t make sense in a way but also does.  The performance she gives there (of La Vie en Rose) is a stunner, maybe the best single performance in the whole movie.  We can certainly see why he’s taken by her.  The scene where he finally persuades her to sing in front of a larger audience—many times larger—is also thrilling.  And around all that, in scenes that never seem just to be filling in detail, he tells his story, which is unusual enough to be engaging but remains elusive.  We keep wanting to know more.

It’s also true that the surrounding cast is remarkable.  Ally’s father Lorenzo, a limo driver who runs a business with some other drivers (among whom is the greatest face in American film, Barry Shabaka Henley) is a guy who was once a crooner himself, who believes that many a great crooner is never discovered, who actually believes he was greater than Sinatra (we never hear him sing a note) and is played hilariously by Andrew Dice Clay.  The whole thing about Ally’s father and his cronies is funny and engaging, as was the drag bar.  And not only is Sam Elliott great (was he ever not great?) as Jack’s brother, but Dave Chappelle appears in an important scene as one of Jack’s good friends.  The cast choices are inspired.

The villain of the piece—if it’s fair to call him that—is a record producer names Rez (Rafi Gavron), who sees Ally perform with Jack and offers to make her a star.  That’s where the movie got complicated for me.  There was a part of me that thought Ally was best when she and Jack were singing together, and that it might have been better if she allowed herself to be a little less famous—she was still pretty damn famous—but continued to do her own thing.  Rez changes her hair color, makes her perform with dancers, refuses whatever input she makes: to my mind he makes her less authentic.  But many contemporary performers perform that way, in ways that don’t seem authentic, though I’m not sure they see it that way.  Lady Gaga does it more than anyone.  Is the point to be a great star or to be authentic?  That question gets lost in all this, if it even exists anymore.

Then there’s the question of Jack’s alcohol and drug problems, and the possibility of recovery.  I don’t want to make light of recovery; I’ve never had to deal with his kind of alcohol or drug addiction.  But there seems to be an assumption here—in this movie and perhaps all the Star is Born movies—that recovery is impossible, at least for a great star.  Yet apparently Bradley Cooper himself is in recovery, and has been successful thus far.  That’s the place where the movie sags for me, in the cliched ending and, in some ways, in the whole second half.  Isn’t it possible for a performer to spurn enormous fame, and settle for ordinary fame?  Isn’t it possible not to be jealous of your wife, but genuinely happy for her?  Isn’t it possible to recover from addiction?  We’re getting the same old story here, and it’s tiresome.

Nevertheless, the music made this movie, and Lady Gaga’s voice made the music.  I’m not ready to say she’s a greater singer than Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand, but I think I like her more.  And she’s a good actress.  She can certainly do schmaltz.

Let’s make this the last version of this movie.  At least in my lifetime.  Please.

[1] My relationship to music is strange one, and I won’t go into too much detail here.  I like jazz, blues, and R&B from back in my day, the sixties and seventies.  I also like selecrock from the sixties.  I basically got hooked on Ray Charles when I was twelve years old and never grew beyond that.  I’m a case of arrested development.