Bradley Cooper embodies masculine pain, again

Rating: 10/10 (6 October 2018)

His crinkly-eyed smile, her powerful presence and their incredible music are amazing, and real. In movie heaven, Ally and Jack are still writing ballads and making babies somewhere far from the shallow now.
This movie is one giant, warm, piercing face-off with an empathetic blind spot so pervasive the entire art critic community seems to have missed it. Anybody else catch that the linchpin of the relationship-building vignettes was her shutting down his consumptive admirers? That the he wouldn't wear the hearing aids because he wanted to be "out there" with the audience and not in his own head? That he was clinging for life to the sliver of hope that was someone who saw and loved him, and he let go when someone convinced him that trying to build up the first level of his Maslow's hierarchy of needs was codependent and toxic?
It's a very effective love letter to human suffering. It doesn't care how many stars or awards people give it, although a Silver Linings Playbook reception would be quite the acknowledgement.