There is an early scene in A Star Is Born, the recently released third remake of the 1937 classic, where Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) and Ally (Lady Gaga) sit in a parking lot, nursing Ally’s hand with a pack of frozen peas, after a bar fight. Two important narrative elements are introduced here: Maine’s childhood, which was marked by misfortune, and Ally’s ability to conjure affecting song lyrics out of thin air. What’s refreshing about the scene is its naturalism and spontaneity; as Maine, Cooper does not aim for emotional transparency. He plays his past down, retelling it with the casualness of a funny story. Gaga’s Ally is likewise restrained. She is still in a state of suspension of disbelief, having spent the night with a world-famous musician, but not altogether uncomfortable. The way her and Cooper’s dialogue overlaps and falters is the first sign of their enduring chemistry, and her response to Cooper’s exposition is singing a line about his state of mind. “Tell me something, boy,” she sighs. “Aren’t you tired trying to fill that void?”
This parking lot moment is part of the transporting first third of A Star Is Born, which depicts, in utterly believable fashion, how Ally and Maine fall in love after he discovers her at a drag bar, and how Ally rises to fame after joining Maine on stage at a major concert. One gets the sense that this succession of events—infatuation, collaboration and then recognition—might play out similarly in real life, not least because Gaga and Cooper disappear into their respective roles, playing off each other’s flaws and inflectional rhythms with a power rarely seen on screen.
It’s consequently a shame when the film transitions to the development of Ally as a real musician, when a video of the duet between her and Maine goes viral. Much screen time is dedicated to recording sessions, live appearances and after-parties, which don’t have the romance or effortlessness of Maine and Ally’s intermittent hotel breakfasts and bedroom shenanigans. Their interactions are soon trimmed, and then relegated to montage sequences.
The script also lets both Gaga and Cooper down in the film’s middle stretch; its simplicity initially evoked reality, but later is sidetracked by stilted conversations and cloying generalizations. Backstage at a concert, Ally tells Rez, her producer, that he needs to let her be herself. The line is meant as an earnest rebuttal of Rez’ overly commercial musical approach, but with little dramatic build-up, lands like a Disney catchphrase. Rafi Gavron, miscast as Rez, exacerbates the weak dialogue by leaning into character clichés, while the rest of the cast avoids them.
Perhaps what bothered me the most about the film was its depiction of stage performance. While “Shallow” soars early on, the same tracking techniques and close-ups on Gaga’s and Cooper’s faces grow redundant when implemented over and over for subsequent concerts, and while I understand Cooper’s probable desire to simulate the experience of watching a show, segments like Ally’s SNL gig dragged, especially because the musical content itself did not excite on the same level that Cooper-Gaga duets did.
The inherent nature of a film about the music industry will admittedly be dominated by music, and I suppose in my mind cinema deserves more balance with silence and speaking. I was moved, however, by the final minutes of A Star Is Born, which see Ally take the stage for a song that Maine wrote, faced by a large audience in a grand theater. The middle of the song abruptly cuts away from the professional lighting and acoustics into Maine and Ally’s home, where Maine sits at the piano, continuing the same melody but in his own rasping and gentle voice, as Ally leans into him and smiles. Despite much of the film’s failure to capture the fullness of Ally and Maine’s relationship, here I was immediately convinced of what their love constituted, how it was made up of a chance encounter, attraction, and a mutual understanding of all the possibilities opened up by songcraft. I only wish I’d been convinced more often.
Fergus Campbell is a freshman in Columbia College.
Editor's Note: Go see "A Star is Born" simply for the performances, as Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper and Sam Elliott deserve Oscar nominations.