A Doomed Love Story with an Incredible Score

Rating: 10/10 (13 October 2018)

This is a movie where everything - plot, acting, characters and soundtrack - comes beautifully together in a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts. Despite some choppy editing in the second half, the great acting, minutely measured plot and the sheer beauty and tragedy of the love story, combined with a score that somehow reflects what is happening on the screen to the letter, is bound to leave you with a ball in your throat when the credits roll.
Even though the movie is called 'A Star Is Born', it could have easily been named, and just as appropriately, 'A Star Goes Out'. The ascension of Gaga's character to stardom is a mirror reflection of Cooper's own spiralling descent into oblivion. Cooper seems to have landed the role of a lifetime, delivering a poignant and heart-breaking performance as a masculine, yet extremely vulnerable ageing country rock star.
By the time Ally comes into the picture, the only thing that can fill the hole in his soul and keep him together is an enormous amounts of booze and pills. Ally's advent will shake him out of his vegetative state, but will also give him something very dangerous - hope. The decline of his own career, the ascent of Ally's and his own battle with addiction will create such strong centrifugal forces that his already fragile mental stability will soon start flying apart at the seams.
Lady Gaga also delivers a good - perhaps not stellar, but good - performance the is most striking by its sheer contrast with her on-stage persona. Her vocal prowess is remarkable, the songs are a sure Academy Award contender and the chemistry with Cooper's character is electrifying.
But the guy who steals the show is Bradley Cooper. It takes nothing short of a battle with addiction of your very own to be able to give such a credible performance of someone who is as damaged and broken as Jackson. I am perplexed by the number of people who have been bashing him for being over-the-top. You are lucky to have not seen mental illness or alcoholism up close, otherwise you would not be moralising this way.
Despite an enormous success with audiences and to some extent with critics, I do not expect the movie to rake in any Academy Awards, except in the music categories. These days, you either have to act in an autobiography or turn yourself into a monster (like Charlize Theron) to even get a nod. In this connection, Lady Gaga might as well get a nomination - just because this is perhaps the first time we ever see her without make-up.