Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga shine in A Star is Born

It’s no secret that A Star Is Born, Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut has grasped the attention of American audiences leading up to award season. As this is the fourth re-telling of the classic love story, Cooper was tasked with attracting an audience of people who already know the ending to his story, as well as a new generation who would be experiencing the story for the first time. The movie could have relied solely on the heart-stopping performances given by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, but it doesn’t. The narrative in and of itself is able to carry the plot despite its familiarity, culminating to the iconic soul-crushing ending.

The movie opens with both stars on the opposite ends of the rockstar spectrum: Jackson Maine (Cooper) as a successful musician touring at the height of his fame, and Ally (Gaga) as a struggling songwriter anxious to make it big in the music industry. Everything this movie has to offer can be showcased in the first thirty minutes of its runtime. The opening shot itself demands attention, with Jack’s soulful guitar playing setting the musical tone for the movie. What follows is the careful unraveling of a potential relationship, as Jack and Ally spend the night falling in love with each other’s raw talent. Every detail of this one night was taken into consideration, which stands out as starkly different in comparison to the middle portion of the movie.

As the movie continues, Ally rises to fame and Jack’s career begins to falter, and the movie begins to slightly falter as well. As the narrative speeds up, the film’s pitch-perfect pacing begins to falter. Scenes conceived and directed with Cooper’s consistent delicate touch whizz by without a second glance. Here, the discrepancies between the methodical direction and performances, and the likely studio-enforced overediting become glaring. Cooper clearly intended ASIB to be a slow-paced story on the epic rise and fall of two respective stars, and I’m sure there was some sort of studio compromise made where many of the scenes in the middle were left on the cutting room floor. This, however, may be perceived as a stylistic choice, depicting how chaotic life can become after immersion into the world of fame. Whether you believe that the rest of the movie pales in comparison to the opening minutes or not, nobody can deny the fact that Cooper and Gaga display perfect chemistry. The rest of the movie almost became overshadowed by their relationship, and I ended up leaving the movie theatre believing they were soulmates.

If I had to find one more flaw with this movie, I would point out that there’s one aspect that “the Academy” historically looks for in a new movie: originality. Unfortunately, this movie doesn’t scream originality; the components of the movie don’t contain any new ideas. A woman desperate for her big break, a career corrupted by drugs and alcohol; these themes have been touched upon a thousand times before. But somehow, Cooper was able to take these beaten down themes and make them fresh. He tweaked the story slightly to comply with the ever-changing style of the music industry, and that’s pretty much it. These same movie tropes were used before to tell cheesy stories, but he brought them back to life with some soul.

Lastly, I would be remiss if didn’t bring up the performances given by the two leads. In a role coveted for years by marquee names such as Beyonce, Alicia Keys, and Rihanna, Lady Gaga had considerable shoes to fill in taking on the role of Ally. However, she is able to imbue her own modern iteration of the character with a remarkable mixture of courage and vulnerability that will be sure to net her a Best Actress nomination at this year’s Academy Awards. Bradley Cooper, pulling double duty as director and the lead actor, also delivers a remarkable performance as alt-country rock star Jackson Maine. As he swings into destructive drinking binges, and then back into short-lived sobriety, Cooper’s wild eyes and lanky hair make Jackson leap off the screen.

Ally leaves the audience with one last shot of her looking directly into the audience. That’s the moment when she told us, a star had been born.