Credit: Malpaso Productions
Love, hatred, addiction, and fame are just a few topics that come to mind about the new popular film, A Star is Born. This film, starring famous actor Bradley Cooper, and popular singer Lady Gaga makes the audience go through a roller coaster of emotions. The plot revolves around Cooper and Gaga’s characters, Jackson Maine (Cooper) is a well-known singer, but is struggling with being an alcoholic and with an addiction to medications. Maine meets Ally (Gaga) after hearing her sing in a small bar and instantly falls in love with her voice, her beauty, and her shyness.
Jackson falls for Ally, to the point where he asks her to go to his concerts. Ally refuses but ends up being sucked into his world, and she definitely doesn’t mind when Maine pulls her on stage to sing her own song to the crowd.
From there, everything blossoms beautifully. Their relationship strengthens, and they fall deeply in love. Ally becomes more and more loved every night she performs with Jackson, to the point where an agent wants to sign her, and have her create her own record. This ends up putting a damper on their relationship as Maine gets jealous and starts to drink more heavily and begins to crush and snort his medications. Personally, seeing him relapse over Ally’s success was angering to me. Jackson was the one who made everything possible for Ally and he should be happy for her.
Credit: Malpaso Productions
One thing that really upset me was after Jackson relapsed a couple of times, Ally told him she wanted him to stop and so he did. He was then great, and supportive towards her making a career for herself. But, as she excitedly gets nominated for Grammy’s, Jackson’s jealousy shines through again. I don’t think that this was fair at all to Ally as she is getting an award that she worked really hard for, and he is supposed to support her and show his love to her at all times.
I think despite my anger towards Jackson often relapsing, I understood why he was struggling. He never had anyone like Ally, and although he does love and support her, he doesn’t know how to express it. And when he’s at a low, even if it’s over something he doesn’t need to be upset about, he doesn’t know how else to cope with his feelings. The movie is excellent at portraying how real and scary addictions can be. Fame really got to Jackson’s head, and since for Ally it was all new, she didn’t know how to help Maine in his time’s of need.
Performance wise, Lady Gaga stepped out of her music world and was able to put herself into a role that she beautifully played. Other than American Horror Story, Gaga doesn’t act. She was able to put herself so deep into this role and was able to connect with her character in a way that is indescribable. Bradley Cooper, although used to acting, stepped out of his usual roles and was able to sing and play a character who struggles deeply. His performance was one worth seeing.
The movie pulls at your heart strings in ways that you didn’t know it could. Warning, bring Kleenex for the end, as it is a major tear jerker.
