The Notebook is covering TIFF with an on-going correspondence between critics Kelley Dong and Daniel Kasman.
Dear Danny,
The best secrets encountered in the cinema are those which are so subliminal that sometimes one does not immediately realize the preciousness of what has been given, nor recognize that any gift was offered at all— but still I leave the theatre totally changed. The meanings of these surreptitious moments can be tricky to articulate without airy hyperbole—we call this "hype." I risk this all to tell you about A Star is Born, an uneven work of startling sincerity and disarming beauty.
The third remake of William A. Wellman's 1937 film, Bradley Cooper stars in his directorial debut as Jackson Maine, a rockstar hanging to life by a thread and simultaneously led closer to rock bottom by alcoholism and drug addiction. One rough night in drunken stupor, Jackson stumbles into a drag bar and watches as Ally (Lady Gaga) performs an exuberant cover of Édith Piaf's "La vie en rose." Her heavily-made up face, veiled in red spotlight, distorts her unwanted features and overshadows a modest life as a server. Dusk approaches as the pair leaves together, ending up in a secluded parking lot where the masks finally come off to reveal the truth that they—singer-songwriters of preternatural talent, capable of conjuring hit records from thin air—are perfect for each other.
Their fates are thus locked together and sealed: Jackson—Jack to Ally—invites his new girlfriend on tour, introducing Ally to nationwide attention and the opportunity to become a star of her own. Like its predecessors, the structure of A Star is Born is that of two timelines moving in opposite directions, a literal crossfade: As Ally's blossoming career fades in, Jack's career fades out into oblivion. But Cooper reconfigures the gears of this familiar machine to function as a far more speculative wonder, to question something above money, drugs, sex, and fame itself. Can pure genius survive without compromise or surrender to others? Can two geniuses, masters at the same craft, be together without the presence of competition?
Alongside screenplay co-writer Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Will Fetters (Remember Me), Cooper filters the philosophical ponderings swirling around Jack and Ally's lives through the elusive, contingent prism of gender. However, it is not Ally—whose blushing and gaping at celebrity life first suggests a two-dimensional trajectory—who must reckon with herself as a woman, but Jack who continually tries and fails to uncover an identity beyond the role that he plays as a man. His onstage tough guy persona—with a hat too big and a beard that hides his round rosy cheeks—only disappears with Ally, who challenges him with her blatant disregard for such standards. Only in the company of each other, away from the clutches of the hierarchical world where only one can win, can Jack and Ally be with each other as equals. In their bathtub, Ally applies mascara and lipstick to Jack's face—a process to which she is accustomed, of putting on the appearance of womanhood. He beams at her and they embrace, briefly joined in spirit, their bodily difference erased by the soapy water. Never fazed by the myth of her inferiority, Ally takes bigger strides towards realizing her dream of stardom as Jack—unable to retrieve confidence outside of his botched attempt to be a cowboy, and constantly fearful of losing his natural, magic touch—shrinks more each day as Ally's face appears on television screens, billboards and JumboTrons, looming over him.
Because Bradley Cooper seems to see the bond between Jack and Ally as a sacred one, little attention is given to the details of their surroundings. Conversations seep from one space into another in a knot of J-cuts, with a swaying camera that swirls past all else that is not love. Hands touching and eyes meeting are filmed in slowed motion, but Ally's skyrocketing into fame is made up of far swifter sequences: Near instantly, a viral YouTube video of Jack and Ally's duet becomes a record deal, a dance-pop single about tight jeans becomes a top-charting album, and a Best New Artist Grammy award becomes a world tour. Concerts begin and end within seconds, with songs frequently cut by editor Jay Cassidy in favor of the two cuddling back home on the couch, in bed, or at the piano, singing together. Throughout his downward spiral, Jack's suffering is linked to a dead father and mother of whom we know close to nothing, and an incurable case of tinnitus—an unnecessarily wretched origin story to an already-pitiable fellow. But all there is to really believe is that Jack may never feel at home, not with Ally nor in his own skin. And despite a constant reassurance woven into the script that addictions and depressive symptoms are not Jack's fault, it is the mold of the franchise that generally dictates that guilt and shame pave the path to self-destruction. So it is in its final seconds that A Star is Born reverts to that jarring and brutal tradition, involving the total end of one star and the divine birth of another.
It initially appears that in this iteration, Ally is superior—the subversive, feminist feature the festival has been seeking out, perhaps? But this is not the case. Cooper paints a wide mural of vulnerable, private intimacies—tearful apologies, petty misunderstandings, smearing cake into each other's faces—between the couple, suggesting that balance between the two was always within reach by way of trust and respect, alongside an unlearning of the world. Addition and subtraction, once again. And still there is so much more hidden in A Star is Born, regarding binaries of success and failure, art and capitalism, and the self-correction that occurs within and throughout this elusive series of remakes.
Has any film at the festival so far mystified you like this, Danny? One that you keep thinking about, or find pleasing to simply parse through?
best,
Kelley