One of the standout songs from the A Star Is Born was co-written by one of my favorite artists, Americana star Jason Isbell. The main line you remember from the movie is, “Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die.” The rest of the song expands on that idea of reckoning with one’s own past and with tradition itself in the name of change. Ironically, the concept of A Star Is Born is the antithesis of this idea, since it’s a remake.
The idea of “letting the old ways die” sounds good, but is ultimately empty. We see so many of the terrible effects of clinging to tradition for no reason, that we then want to throw out tradition wholesale. There has to be a better way, one that acknowledges the good in “the old ways,” but does seek better outcomes. And as far as movies go, that’s exactly what A Star Is Born does, along with its fellow Oscar contender, First Man.
A Star Is Born is a remake of a story that has already been made not one, not two, but three times by Hollywood. This is a lot, even for this age of reboots, but it makes sense when you consider the story. In every iteration, we start with a male star (in the first two movies, released in 1937 and 1954, he’s a movie star; in this version and the 1976 one, he’s a rock star) who meets a down-on-her-luck female ingénue. They fall in love, and as her star rises, his star falls, mirroring his descent into alcoholism.
A tried and true story of fame and the trials surrounding it does seem like the perfect Hollywood story, to the point where I’m surprised there aren’t more than four versions. But, sight unseen, you have to wonder if this new version would have anything new to say. Luckily, Bradley Cooper mines the history of this story for new gems.
A remake like this has to start by aiming for quality at the very least, and everything about this movie is dripping with the care it took to craft. The music is memorable, from Isbell’s “Maybe It’s Time” to the sure Best Song contender “Shallow,” and the cinematography fills the screen with intimate close-ups. But the performances are what you come out of the movie raving about. Cooper is unsurprisingly great, though he does give us depths here that we haven’t seen from him before. Lady Gaga, however, is a revelation. I knew she was a natural pop star, but I was unsure how her talent would translate to a serious movie. Well, she runs away with the movie.
By all accounts, though, theirs was a true partnership. Cooper the director was inspired by Gaga the performer, and with their powers combined… Cooper’s direction is just as much a revelation as Gaga’s performance. If you’re looking for seams, you’ll find them; several scenes last too long, giving way to dialogue that feels improvised and not as tight as the rest of the movie. But mostly, I was left with the impression that A Star Is Born is Cooper’s singular stamp on this story. His version isn’t about jealousy the way the three before were. Instead, he has something true to say about authenticity, and about how the struggle to remain authentic when the world wants you to be false can drive a celebrity to dark places.
The director of Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino, gave an interview with Indiewire recently in which he spoke about the concept of making movies from source material:
…I don’t believe in originality in filmmaking. I think filmmaking is really a question of point of view. Cinema became all about if you wanted to become an auteur [it meant] someone writing a story. So, if you had your name written on the script, that made you an auteur, but I grew up with Hitchcock being an auteur and I think he’s never written one single script his whole entire life. Stanley Kubrick never made an original movie. He always made a movie from source, and in doing that he made some of the most strikingly personal and unique films of his generation.
I could quibble with Guadagnino on if there is such a thing as originality in movies, but I think he’s right that making a movie from somebody else’s source material is an effective way to communicate your own perspective on a theme. This reminded me of Cooper, whose meta-desire for authenticity in his work drove him to make the fourth version of an old Hollywood story. But it also reminded me of Damien Chazelle and his new movie, First Man.
Chazelle is not the first director you think of when it comes to remakes or adaptations. Before First Man, the story of Neil Armstrong based on his biography by James R. Hansen, Chazelle wrote and directed three very original movies: La La Land, Whiplash, and the little-seen Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench. First Man is his first foray into adapted screenplays. But this is without a doubt still a Damien Chazelle production. The technical wizardry we’ve come to expect from his direction is still there, but going in different directions.
Surprisingly intimate, First Man follows Neil Armstrong (Ryan Gosling) and his rise within NASA to the moon following the death of his daughter from a brain tumor. I expected a sweeping epic along the lines of Apollo 13 or The Right Stuff. Indeed, I was telling people before I saw this movie that I was skeptical, because the trailer looked like every other astronaut movie we’ve already seen. But the trailers and marketing wildly mischaracterized the kind of movie I was in for.
Truthfully, I wasn’t sure if I even liked the movie immediately after it was over. First Man, for as breathtaking as some of the launch and space sequences are, is a slow-burning biopic, not a space epic. There is little flashy about the effects or the direction; rather, Chazelle goes the opposite direction with his camera spending much of its time almost inside Armstrong’s helmet or up close on shuttle parts rattling. The intent seems to be to show us the tenuous reality of sending mankind into space, especially as we see several of Armstrong’s friends and coworkers die in the process.
But mulling over the movie later, I realized how much I admired it and how much the final shot moved me. It’s difficult to make a movie about history that tries to be true to history (yes, the American flag is in the movie) while also communicating a personal theme. A clear line can be drawn through the heroes in Chazelle’s movies to Gosling’s Armstrong, and that’s obsessive commitment to a goal. Some have characterized Gosling’s performance as too muted, but I found in the perfect marriage with Chazelle’s direction. It’s their version of a space movie, one that’s clear-eyed about the costs and the heights in equal measure.
I don’t expect many people to feel the way I do about First Man. It’s far more likely that people will feel the way I do about A Star Is Born. First Man is insular, and A Star Is Born plays to the cheap seats. But they are both exemplary variations on their themes. Both are singular perspectives on an old story. Letting the old ways die helps no one; let’s instead do as Cooper and Chazelle have done, and give the old ways new life.
Coulda Been a Contender 