Escalator of Euphoria: Out of Order

Rating: 4/10 (21 February 2019)

"A Star Is Born" follows the love story of Jackson and Ally and her meteoric rise to pop music stardom. Lady Gaga is at home in this role, having claimed to have made celebrity into in art form in and of itself. Jackson, an established professional musician, comes across Ally's lounge act by chance as he stumbles into a bar she's performing in one evening. The two have a rapport, and Ally shares a heartfelt song she wrote for him in the parking lot of a convenience store. In what seems like the blink of an eye, she's on stage with Jackson in front of thousands - performing one of her original songs as a duet. The crowds rave, the critics adore, limitless success piles onto itself, a pristine courtship builds to marriage -- it seems nothing can stop this train of happiness from chugging along to infinity. Though is Jackson really there throughout it all in his drug-addled stupor? The non-stop escalator of euphoria can't go on forever. And it indeed it doesn't, crashing in a fiery blaze of suicidal trauma at the end. Jackson's suicide - like all suicides - leaves a multitude of questions. For example, where were his demons leading up to the event? Is he a haunted Chris Cornell? An overwhelmed, depressive, confused Kurt Cobain? A Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix with too much guilt on his modest psychological plate? It's a fantastical, sweet love story divorced from the day-to-day reality of its viewers, but I prefer to see it as a statement on the emptiness of fame.