A STAR IS BORN: IT WANTS TO KILL YOU

A STAR IS BORN operates on highs:  the loudest guitar, the bluest blue, a love most supreme, the most destructive downward turn.   The movie bathes its subjects in blues and reds,  contoured by the presence of shadows (analogue to a spotlight), the colors and shifting lights correlate to the music (alternation of soft ballads' intimacy and louder vocal proclamations of rock), and how it in turns shapes our moods.

The world of A STAR IS BORN is uncluttered; it is essential in style.

Jackson;  Elegant Mess

Jackson Maine is onstage:  Red stadium lights dominate.   The spotlight in the small drag club where Ally first performs reds the entire room.  The ideas behind the color identical, yet the latter set to smaller scale.  The connective ocean flows between the rock star and the waitress. The ocean is alcohol. The series of narrative and visual echoes are filmed as intensifications.

Coming out of the stadium he is driven away and has a chance encounter with Ally (Lady Gaga).  Their resigned eyes reflect one another.

(An answer) sung by Ally in the parking lot to Jack:
"Aren't you tried of tryin to fill that void?   Or do you need more?"

They bond in Jackson's boozy exurban stop-over. The two collide and quietly connect.

Prisoners of the Light

Jackson is an addict, he is down, and so naturally, in his back pocket he's got plans.  They're reserved for another day, one not too near, because they are not sure to occur.  But he has an out.  His disease endures, desiring him dead.

The viewers are confronted with Jackson's disease in piecemeal moments; a few clues followed by a slow burn of increasingly cringe-worthy to frightening moments of obliteration. The depiction of Jackson's second affliction, tinnitus, is an echo of his addiction.  To suffer from it is to hear too loudly, or to hear sounds internally that do not exist externally.  The sounds create a singular pain. Jackson's heart and mind are sick with this affliction.  A sonic equivalent to the distorted reality that magnifies his problems; expanding as Ally rises to stardom.  What better way to illustrate the pain in being so sensitive to everything, and by not being able to dull it anymore?

The update provided in Cooper's version of A Star is Born is heightened coverage of Jackson's addiction.  The male psyche is the way in to this dark tunnel, replete with wounds and a soul baring desire for love and comfort. The connection and the love shared between them is believable. They speak of how they feel what they write -- how they shape it into something more; a connective process impregnating them both.  As their connection takes root, stakes are raised; narratively the love and safety Jackson seeks seems answered as he bolsters Ally's problematic self esteem and drive. Visual cues follow the narrative: blues become reds and the music and cuts come quicker.  Melodrama by way of music video:  dynamic cuts make points between the shots, eyes exposed -- pregnant with trauma and missed chances.  Each frame is an intact production. The music serves a heightened emotional intensity.  Addiction is rewarded with not often seen honesty-- it pulls and it lures.  His impulse to obliterate is a beautiful living thing. 

He is sickened by the alteration of Ally's music, a denigration of the Real.  Teams enter:  they surround Ally and re-mold her.  She is driven further from herself.  She is produced and contained, separated from the truth they once had in a parking lot.  Artifice was stripped when her drag club makeup was peeled off her face; a bandage hiding the wound. As fame builds and blinds (with deepening blues and reds, intensified edits), the makeup returns to obscure and entrap. The path is full of fraudulence, more than he will bare.  The answer:  Use.  Escape.

Art Pepper, addicted jazz musician:

"Living without love is like not living at all."

back to the film:
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 Another aspect of Cooper's style that struck me is the idea of the spotlight and how it bears down on someone suffering.  It can illuminate a broken spirit.  Under that light, no one escapes.  Jackson, in graphic relation to the spotlight in each frame, is devastating to the viewer.  His beautiful but broken spirit is clearest (onstage performing or at the Grammys) when he is under its pull. Ally is filmed like an illuminated spirit, expansive in power and emotion in the frames where she is in the spotlight. The film is often dark; using expressive lights via the glare of the overproduced tv segment or the total soul baring exposure of the concert spotlight.  In Cahiers du Cinema, there is a 1970 article by Serge Daney and Jean-Pierre Oudart called "Work, Reading, Pleasure."  Daney speaks of how a film can give us "...the splendour of truth."  He goes on to describe film, in a materialist sense, as a "prisoner of the light."

The end:  She is born; he dies.  He (Jack) has left the earth; surrendered his war with meaninglessness. This is a sad state of affairs, but also: brutal, secret pain has been transformed because of the artist and their craft.  Sorting out the  aftermath, there is a brief scene of his brother (Sam Elliott) and Ally in discussion. The brother riffs on inevitability and work of a songwriter:  He pointedly tells her there are 12 octaves in every song, and every song is always going to keep telling the same 12 notes, in different ways.

It is the same circle that keeps going around and around, and everyone tells the same story, and its only art when someone arranges it this way.

Another dozen--   12 steps that can lead to freedom.

Jackson's brief respite in recovery. Separated from the group.