It’s barely October, but the movie awards season seems already in full swing. Oscarbait films are beginning to hit theaters, and one of the biggest just landed like a white-hot asteroid: A Star is Born.
The core story is almost as old as the Hollywood hills. Janet Gaynor and Fredric March first brought life this tragic tale in 1937, followed by the more famous remakes of 1954 (Judy Garland and James Mason) and 1976 (Barbra Streisand and Kris Kritofferson). But this version, starring Bradley Cooper as a grizzled, fading singer and Lady Gaga as his talented young ingenue, just might be the best yet.
And it has, at its edges, the faintest glimmer of faith, and perhaps a hint of the hope it can bring.
It’s a difficult story: With its sexual content and piled profanities, this R-rated quasi-musical sure isn’t family friendly. But beyond that, the story itself can almost crush the unwary. Cooper’s Jackson Maine becomes almost a figure out of Greek tragedy—an honorable man with a fatal flaw, and whose ultimate fate feels both crushingly heartbreaking and somehow inevitable.
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