Star is Born Comes With Heartache, Song and Just a Twinkle of Faith

Jackson begins the story as a wildly successful country/rock star. You get the sense he lives for his music: His wide-brimmed hat comes off, his voice rises in pitch, and—like any great performer—somehow makes a sold-out stadium feel intimate, like a gathering of friends. He’s lost some of his hearing and suffering from terrible tinnitus, but he refuses to wear earplugs. He doesn’t want anything to get between he and his music, or between he and his fans—even if it means losing what little hearing he has.

It’s evidence of his commitment, but also the first hint we get at his penchant for self-destruction. Or, maybe, the second. He drinks heavily, too, imbibing before, during and after the concert. When he’s on stage—at least in the first part of the film—he seems fully alive. Off it, he speaks in a slurred growl, wide-brimmed hat covering much of his face. It’s almost as if he’s trying to lose himself in himself—fade into his own habits and addictions.

Jackson has no real friends that we can see. His relationship with his brother is caustic and often combustible.  For all his success and wealth, we get the impression—even in the movie’s opening moments–that he’s an empty man, trying to flood the hole inside himself with booze until he himself may drown. And one of his biggest hits—the one the fans cheer for when he plays the opening bars—contains a curious blend of hope and resignation.

“Maybe it’s time to let the old ways die,” he sings. “It takes a lot to change a man, It takes a lot to try.” Does he have enough in him to try?

The song itself sets the table setting for the movie itself. When Jackson meets Ally, (Gaga), he finds a reason to try, at least. Or, maybe more fairly, a reason to hope and to live. And she—like the movie’s audience—tries to wish and will him into a better state of mind.

But for all the hope and promise that Ally embodies—not just her youth and her talent, but that she might be the lifeboat Jackson so desperately needs—we fear that she’ll not be enough. Or if she is, that Jackson will sabotage that hope. Drill holes in that lifeboat.

No one person can fill a man as empty as Jackson. That takes something more than one person can give, no matter how willing. And Jackson, in “Maybe It’s Time,” suggests he has no interest in seeking out that transcendental “more.”

“Nobody knows what waits for the dead,” Jackson sings. “Some folks just believe in the things they heard, in the things they said.”