A Star Is Born

A review by Tammy Davis

 

Sometimes Love Isn’t Enough

 

A Star Is Born is a must-see movie, but ladies, be forewarned:  wear waterproof mascara and take a box of tissues.  Even though it’s a love story, this isn’t the best choice for date night.  Your date needs to be someone who will love you ugly because after this movie, you will be a mess!!

A Star Is Born is real, and it is powerful.  And like life, we don’t always get the happy ending we want.

Bradley Cooper plays the role of Jack, a troubled rock star on top of the world.  Lady Gaga plays Ally, a young woman waiting tables by day and singing covers at night.  The thing that initially brings them together is the thing that ultimately rips them apart.  Alcohol.

After a gig, Jack runs out of liquor and orders his driver to pull into a bar.  Ally is the club darling, but she’s not herself.  Fake hair, fake eyebrows.  She is a caricature singing covers.  She is too afraid to sing her own songs and just be herself.  Jack is stoned but captivated.  The romance doesn’t begin while the two are under the influence of something else.  The romance really begins when both characters start being their real selves, sitting on the ground of a parking lot.  Ally has washed her face and changed her clothes.  She sings a few lines of a song she has written.  Jack has sobered up enough to recognize her talent.  He is clear-headed enough to share his back story.  That’s when the magic of the movie happens, when they reveal their most vulnerable selves.

Jack is smitten, and Ally is intrigued and a little star struck.  Jack invites Ally to come to one of his shows.  He calls her on stage to perform with him.  Her first reaction, “I am NOT doing this,” turns in to a reluctant walk towards the microphone and ends with a powerful, sexy scene.

Ally’s star is launched as Jack’s demons continue to pull him deeper and deeper into the mire of drugs and alcohol.  At this point both of the characters have lost themselves.  Ally allows her new manager to move her away from her true talent and away from her true self.  She dies her hair and begins choreography sessions for songs that don’t have much heart or soul.

Through Ally’s rise to fame and Jack’s fall from grace, the romance continues to grow and strengthen.  As Ally is at a high point in her career, Jack hits rock bottom.  The scene from the Grammy’s is tough to watch.  It bothered me that nobody was helping her.  I kept thinking why doesn’t someone help her?  Then, it hit me.  With an addict, no one can help. She tried to make it a joke, then she literally tried to cover him up with her dress, but ultimately, she is helpless, and there’s nothing anyone can do.

The only next step for Jack is rehab.  A touching scene happens as Ally visits.  She asks if he plans to come home when he gets better.  Anyone who has ever been tangled up with an addict knows why.  The addict often needs a fresh start, a new world that does not include the players from the old.  Jack assures her he will be back.

I thought it was interesting that no matter how bad things were, Ally never seemed angry with Jack.  He would behave badly, and then he would cry and apologize.  Classic addict behavior.  No matter how bad it was, she would simply say, “It’s ok.  It’s a disease.  It’s not your fault.”  The only time she only got upset with him was when he told her she looked ugly.  That was the only time she said the words, “You hurt me.”  For Ally, her insecurity was her appearance, specifically her nose.  She could endure his drunken episodes, but when he told her she was ugly, that was the thing that got to her.  Insecurities run deep.

After Jack’s homecoming, the audience is hopeful.  But that optimism doesn’t last long. Ally’s manager fills Jack’s head with doubts and guilt.  He tells him he almost ruined Ally’s career.  He pressures him with questions of what if it happens again.  An outsider’s poison trumps Ally’s love and support and encouragement.  That devil addiction wins another battle.

 

Jack does not get better because sometimes love isn’t enough.  Sometimes our demons are so strong and we are so broken that despite having it all, we can never be anything but a broken child.  We can never truly get out of that role.  In the end, Jack couldn’t stop being anything except a little boy with a painful childhood.

 

A Star is Born.  A great movie full of great love and great suffering and great pain.  At the end of the movie, Ally goes back to her true self.  Isn’t that what we all have to do eventually?  We all have to make our way back to ourselves.  Hopefully, we go back to our best self.  That’s what Ally does.

The last scene shows her performing on stage, alone.  Her hair is exactly as it was when we met her waitressing tables for a living.  She has on a simple dress, and she is simply beautiful.  She sings a song that no one has ever heard before.  It’s a song he wrote for her.  It’s a love song.

But as A Star Is Born reminds us,  sometimes love isn’t enough.  If you are broken, it doesn’t matter who is in that brokenness with you.  Broken people often stay broken.  Jack literally had thousands of fans cheering for him and that wasn’t enough.  Thousands of cheering fans couldn’t dull the pain.  He needed pills and booze for that.  Ally couldn’t have loved Jack more or supported Jack more.  There is nothing that she could have done that would have made Jack whole.  Sometimes, love just isn’t enough.

A Star is Born will become a classic romance.  Folks will be watching this movie 20 years from now.  Ladies, make sure you wear waterproof mascara and have a box of tissues.  Make sure you know you are not going to get the ending you hope for.