The Last Remake (Hopefully) of A Star is Born (Spoilers)

In 2015 pop diva Lady Gaga (a.k.a. Stefani Gernanotta) showed she could sing with the big kids by performing an irony free, refreshingly straight forward medley of songs from the Sound of Music at the Academy Awards ceremony to commemorate that film's 50th anniversary. She further demonstrated her range a year later with her folk and rock influenced album Joanne. This latter day queen of the dance floor "subverts expectations" again in '18, mixing standards, rock, country, and, of course her usual genre, danceable pop, while also showing she can act, in her latest project, A Star is Born. 

Lady Gaga, though, is a symbol of what's right about this third official remake of the 1937 classic movie, but also what's wrong with it. By herself, she's great. Along with music you'd expect, you also get her channeling Edith Piaf, while throwing in a sly tribute to Judy Garland, who stared in the most successful version of this story back in 1954. I don't what to over sell her acting, but she is certainly up to the task here. Bradly Cooper shows some range of his own. He not only stars, but also sings, quite well, and directs for the first time. Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Eliot and Dave Chappelle offer solid supporting work. The concert scenes were filmed in front of live audiences between sets at actual music festivals, adding to movie's authentic feel. Each of these elements work well, and individually everyone involved deserves praise, especially Lady Gaga, who earns her top billing.

All this should be enough for me to make a positive recommendation, but it isn't. I found something lacking. By the middle of the movie I was bored, quite frankly, checking the time, wondering how exactly the movie was going to dispose of it's tragic hero. So far, the previous cinematic iterations have offered us two ocean drownings and a drunken dune buggy accident. Here we get diversionary foreshadowings, meant to keep us guessing how he will end it all, but end it all he does, as he must, I guess. 

Jackson Maine (Cooper) is an established countrified rock star (the music is tough to label, since the loud numbers are certainly rock and the ballads, definitely country). He's haunted by a troubled childhood, suffering from alcohol and drug addiction. Added to his difficulties is a severer case of tinnitus which is robbing him if his hearing. On the way back from a gig, out of liquor, he has his driver stop at the first open bar they pass. It ends up being a transgender establishment, but since booze is booze, what the heck. While there he catches a performance by the lone cisgender woman on the bill, Ally (Ms Germanotta) and is blown away by her performance of La Vie en Rose. By the end of a night of running around, getting into minor scrapes, Jack is completely smitten. After hearing a fragment of a tune she's been working on he encourages Ally to write songs. He insists she travel with him to his next gig, and after some serious persuading, that borders on stalking, she hops on the private jet. Once at the show, Jack draws her on stage to sing the number she demoed for him the night before, complete with harmony parts, chord changes and a bridge (I know, it's a movie). 

From there film pretty much follows the story that the others do. Ally gets an agent, she and Jack marry, and along the way she's introduced to the dark side of the cut throat music industry. Jack becomes jealous at his discovery's rise. He descends further into addiction as she continues to ascend up the pop music ladder. He embarrasses her publicly at what should have been her triumphant moment. When they reconcile Ally decides to put her still fledgling career on hold to help him recover. Her agent tells Jack what a useless drag on Ally he is, which prompts him to finish what he first attempted when he was 13 years old. 

Knowing how this was going to end the only suspense was over what method of suicide would be employed. At a certain point watching this movie was like playing the board game "Clue." All I could think of was "will it be drunk on a motor cycle over a cliff, or prescription pain killer coma in the swimming pool?" It was neither of those two options, but if you're paying attention you'll figure it out before the end. I was holding out hope that they would really subvert expectations and let the poor slob live, which is strange for me because I'm always complaining about unearned happy endings. While it's probably better they didn't go that rout, it's the only thing that would have really gotten my attention.  

It's more than just that the film's themes and ending are predictable for anyone familiar with the previous versions that left me yawning.  The fatal flaws with A Star is Born 2018 revolve around motivation and pacing. Jack is portrayed as being sweet, sensitive and, almost ego free. He's incredibly open and supportive of Ally’s growth as a singer songwriter it’s hard to believe that he would turn on her simply out of jealousy, especially since his career is humming along just fine. We never really see him preoccupied by the young turks coming up behind him, as we do Kris Kristofferson in the 1976 film. There's a scene late in the second act that hints at sweating the competition, but it seems forced. The turn of events comes out of nowhere, and seems like it happened because the script needed him to have a melt down right then. In general, he's a happy, if depressed, drunk so his eventual flashes of belligerence, as mild as they are, still don't make a lot of sense. 

There were other things that didn't make sense to me. When he ridicules Ally for her stylistic turn to dance music, it’s dismissed as a cover for his envy. I don’t have a hard time at all believing that a “serious” rocker would look down on his prized discovery for turning herself into a pop tart. On the other hand, I also can see him going along with it because their styles appeal to two different audiences, so in a way there’s no real competition at all. Think about it. In the real world does Jack White really compete for the same entertainment dollars as Ariana Grande? Plus, professional musicians tend to have a broader appreciation for the wide world of pop and classical styles than the fans do. So anything is possible there, but the way the character is established I don't see him turning into a jerk since it's never established that he was capable of that before. I also questioned why she had to wait for the agent to pick her up in the first place. I find it hard to believe that Jack’s people wouldn't have signed her up once she started singing at his shows. If he wanted her for himself I’m sure Jack could have set her up with representation and a record deal pretty quick.

While the movie goes against the current Hollywood trend of concocting a contrived happy ending, it still makes Jack's character too nice. We have to love this man, and by extension the actor playing him, so the choices made may render him pathetic, but still completely sympathetic to the audience. The late Burt Reynolds once said that what separates the B list actors from the Stars is that a Star is dangerous. He gives off at least a small dose of menace, to go along with the requisite charm and good looks. To paraphrase the old cliché, the danger is why men wanted to be someone like Reynolds, Robert Mitchum or Sean Connery, and women want to be with them. Cooper never hints that he's dangerous to anyone but himself. While Lady Gaga and Cooper have real chemistry, I see Jackson Maine as too much of a self pitying sad sack for the relationship to leave the friend zone. Unless, that is, Ally's just a user taking advantage of her new friend to get ahead, which again would go against the character as established from the beginning. 

So, every body does their jobs really well. The acting is great and I really liked the music, even the pop stuff, which usually isn't my bag. But because the Jackson Maine character seemed off, and thus motivations questionable, it never felt right as a whole package.

Which brings me to Bradly Cooper's direction, which again points to what works and what doesn't. I liked his visual style a lot. I had the feeling he was doing more than a little experimentation with lighting and angles, which I think is a good thing. On the down side the movie stalls at times in the second act, but seems to creep to a stop in the last third. The musical finale, when the star is finally born, paying tribute to her dead husband while stepping out into the spotlight on her own, is the crowning moment of the story. In this case, it's Lady Gaga's moment to shine. Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand were established stars of stage and screen already when they made their movies (Janet Gaynor plays an actress, so the '37 original didn't end with a musical number). But Stefani Germanotta is truly birthing her movie career here, if you will. She deserved the stage to herself, so I was put off by the ill-timed flashback. It was supposed to make me cry, instead all I thought was, "there's that jealous, selfish, Jack again, ruining Ally's big spot."

So, a mixed reaction. Good acting, good music, signs that Bradly Cooper could develop into a fine director and that Lady Gaga can make it in the movies. But fuzzy characterizations, muddled motivations and erratic pacing keeps A Star is Born from really taking off. There are other reasons I'm not sure the movie works, that have more to do with if the story itself even makes sense in 2018. But I've written enough for now. Maybe I'll get into that further on down the line. 

Paganism and the Dictatorship of the Narrative

One of the oldest tropes going is comparing the Twentieth and Twenty-first century United States to the ancient Roman Empire. Post Republican Rome was in reality a monarchy that went to great pains not to self identify as such. For instance they didn't call their emperors emperors, this is a title applied by later historians. They called them princeps, or First Citizen, among other non monarchical titles they held. It's hard to argue that the US isn't an empire, what with manifest destiny, extraterritorial possessions and military bases in foreign countries, but no president or presidential hopeful would ever cop to something like that. And the average citizen would recoil at such a claim, as well. The reason for the dissonance between perception and reality is linked to the founding "myths" of both Rome and the US. In fairness I, think myth is too strong a word, in both cases, but at the very least the founding ideals of both places got perverted somewhere long the way. 

The comparisons go on. Football is compared to the gladiator fights. The entertainment industry and industrial news complex is often said to be nothing more than purveyors of bread and circuses, mindless diversions meant to keep the masses distracted from what is really going on. More recently some have observed that with the decline of Christianity and traditional religions pagan practice has begun to reemerge. The anything goes sexual mores of the Sexual Revolution also echo antiquity. The acceptance of abortion, euthanasia, the contraceptive mentality are a part of the re-paganizing of Western society. Each of these examples doesn't offer a perfect match between then and now, but as is said, history doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme. 

My purpose here isn't to compare and contrast the sexual mores of the ancient and contemporary worlds, or even to compare both civilizations more broadly. All I'm suggesting is that as Christian and Jewish values, rooted in Scripture and Tradition, exert less influence over the culture something else needs to come in and fill the gap, and what seeps in may not necessarily be pagan, but in our case, it is. What I've been thinking about lately is the concept of due process and the burden of proof. We don't appreciate how Biblical these concepts are, and as we put our traditional notions of innocent until proven guilty aside we are reverting back to the days of Rome, and this isn't a good thing.

The Romans believed in guilty until proven innocent. That a charge was made was sufficient for a person't life to be ruined. It was the accused's responsibility to prove that they didn't do something, and as is often said, proving a negative is practically impossible. Many were imprisoned, exiled and executed because of unsubstantiated accusations. Because the accuser only had to lay the claim, but not prove it, the system was often abused, with courts sometimes used to settle personal or political scores. 

The Old Testament says that an accusation needs to be attested to by at least two or three witnesses before a person could be condemned (Dt. 19:15), with harsh a punishment exacted if the testimony is proven to be false (v.16). Was justice perverted at times? Of course. Just look to the case of Ahab stealing Naboth's vineyard through "legal" treachery (I Kings 21). Jesus' own trial before the Sanhedrin was a miscarriage of justice (Matt. 27:1-31; Mark 15:1-20; Luke 23:1-25; John 18:28-19:16). No system of jurisprudence is perfect. But the Bible lays down a solid basis for judging guilt or innocence that at least makes people think twice before bringing false or frivolous charges.

Guilty before proven innocent often rules the day in the court of public opinion. It's always been the case. But the criminal justice system functions so that the passions of the moment don't determine the final judgment. Guilt or innocence is meant to be decided in an systematized, organized, dispassionate setting where just the facts determine the outcome. Do judges and juries get it wrong at times? Yes. As I wrote before no system is perfect, and none on this earth ever will be. But what we have is a solid system that shouldn't be scrapped so quickly or thoughtlessly. And make no mistake, there are those who would, in the name of social justice, tear asunder the very foundations of the justice system itself to arrive more speedily at the outcome they want. This isn't justice at all, but the will to power exercised in a most grotesque way. 

As for the court of public opinion, it's not ruled by principles of jurisprudence. As individuals and as a community we make judgments based on the best information we have at our disposal. We follow our gut instincts most of the time, not rock hard evidence. While I’m a firm believer in the power of intuition, hunches aren’t infallible. They may be guided by common sense and experience, but they can also be influenced by prejudices. In a politically polarized age we can be quick to judge guilt or innocence based on our ideology rather than on an honest examination of the facts as we understand them. We can be ruled by the dictatorship of the narrative, that automatically reads discrete, complicated situations through the lens of an overarching archetype that may not even apply. Our judgments are deemed honest and true because they fit the narrative, not because they fit the particular facts. Decisions reached in the court of public opinion should always be held as suspect, but the dictatorship of the narrative renders a healthy self doubt impossible.


As we lose the sense of due process, and with it the principle that the accused is innocent until proven guilty, these snap judgments based on a narrative as opposed to the facts become more likely, not just in the court of public opinion, but in actual courts of law as well. Jurors are chosen from among the general public. As more and more people are educated to follow the prevailing narrative as opposed to following the facts, the actual discerning of evidence and reaching an impartial verdict becomes more and more difficult, with miscarriages of justice far more likely. 

Serious allegations against politicians seeking public office or nominees to cabinet positions or judgeships should be investigated. The vetting or nomination process isn't a court trial, but the same principles need to apply. The seriousness of the charge alone, or even the apparent sincerity of either the accused or accuser, shouldn't be what determines the outcome of the process. We have gone from looking at the facts to deciding with emotions, which are easily manipulated. Emotions are even more easily manipulated when people approach a case with an ideologically driven narrative already firmly planted in their heads.

When due process and the burden of proof are thrown aside, whether formally or informally, we all lose. Justice becomes a matter of power alone. The left witch hunts against the right, and then when the right takes power, the opposite is the case. Anyone can be denounced for any reason by anyone for an offense allegedly committed at anytime, or even at some indeterminate time in the past, in a place that no one can remember with people who can't recall being present. No one needs to prove what they are accusing, the accusation is enough to unleash a moral panic. All that matters is that people are turned into players who fit a narrative, and it's the narrative that makes it true. 

Jesus commanded us not to judge, lest we be judged (Mt. 71-3). Most moralists will tell you the our Lord was speaking of judging the heart, but that we can and at times should judge actions (Lk. 12:57, 1 Cor. 11:13). Courts of law are primarily concerned with actions, though judging motivations and intent are certainly a part of the process. When discernment of facts is replaced by appeals to emotion we become less rooted in our Jewish Christian values, and become more like the mob of ancient Rome. We all become potential targets of enemies, personal and political. We become suspicious of others and they in turn look side eyed at us. We are all potential felons, whether the evidence adds up or not. No one is safe in a world ruled by the dictatorship of the narrative.