A great love story, also story of a fall

Romantic saga

Continued from Page 13

rock ‘n’ roll patriarch’s point of view. As exquisite as is as Ally, “A Star Is Born” is Jackson Maine’s story. It’s the tale of his tragedy, the story of the end of one man’s pop dynasty that also suggests the end of a way of being.

That’s the driving, churning power of the film’s second half – so if you’re one of those people, like The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, who think that “A Star Is Born” is only captivating for its first hour, when Jackson and Ally are all tender and lovey-dovey, and you think it gets draggy after that, I’d argue you’re missing out on what’s great about it.

I love the incandescence of that first hour, too. Who doesn’t, on some level, want to see these two go on singing “Shallow” forever? But the beauty of the second half, which struck me even more the second time I saw it, is the drama of watching things fall apart. And what’s falling apart in “A Star Is Born” is the whole psychology of male dominion.

Gaga

Troubles

For when you come down to it, what – really – is Jackson Maine’s problem? He’s a serious lush, so obviously that’s at the center of his troubles. The character has been given a deftly detailed and convincing backstory (dad was a drunk, raised by his brother, etc.) that basically explains how he got that way. But great movies often work in a mythological sphere. The real story of Jackson Maine isn’t simply that he drinks too much. The real story is told to us, through Bradley Cooper’s extraordinary direction, from the moment Jackson gets on stage in that opening scene, popping stimulants just before he grinds out the same old guitar licks that bring his fans to a frenzy but have begun to leave Jackson numb. He’s been doing this for too long, and when he meets Ally, he sees her as a kindred spirit – a continuation of his rock ‘n’ roll fantasy. That’s part of what’s magical about their onstage performance of “Shallow”. For one brief, blissed-out moment, we hear two souls chiming together in a dream.

But as Ally gets drawn into the star machinery of the new era, Jackson has to confront something much larger than the fact that his romantic partner will now have the limelight. Despite one ambiguous harsh moment (the drunken cake in the face), “A Star Is Born” is not, fundamentally, a drama of jealousy. What’s so threatening to Jackson about Ally’s ascent, into the stratosphere of corporately marketed and synchronized dance pop, is that it represents the death of the place that Jackson comes from: the arena of “authentic” rock. And that was always a male bastion. In fact, from the dawn of Elvis Presley onward, it was the male bastion, the place where men showed up to writhe and be worshipped. The caterwauling electricguitar solo, the kind that’s Jackson’s trademark... well, we all know what the electric-guitar solo was. Every lick wasn’t just played, it was spewed.

That’s what’s so great about the scene at the Grammys where Jackson is part of the band doing a tribute to Roy Orbison. He was supposed to sing lead, but got brushed aside at the last moment for a younger, hipper singer with the right demo. So that’s an age thing. But it’s also a gender thing. At the performance, there are two singers, one of them female. And what this does is to update and civilize the song they’re singing, which is “Pretty Woman,” by stripping it of its 20th-century malegaze wolfishness. Jackson still gets to play the guitar riff (doo-doo-doo-doo doo-doo-doo-doo), and, drunk as a skunk, he lets it rip with too much feedback, too much pause, too much...male prerogative. The way he plays it, it sounds incredible, but it’s a swan song. The pretty woman is no longer going to be an object – she is now rising up to grab the power. And Jackson was the last one to get the memo.

Conflict

The conflict between Jackson and Ally is played out in the arena of alcoholism, and his “performance” up at the podium of the Grammys is a last embarrassing gasp of privilege – not exactly the kind of spew you want to do on national TV. But what the conflict is really about is Jackson’s sloshed, passive-aggressive rejection of the dance-pop world that Ally is the new queen of. It’s not real to him, not like his s--kicking Southern-fried rock. But what he really means is: It’s not male. The pre-eminence of dance pop in our time, which had its roots, of course, in the disco revolution (also rejected by a great many men, including the kind of indierock hipsters who sneer about it to this day), was kicked off in a major way by the rise of Lady Gaga. She defined the new era, in which the aesthetics of electro-beats would begin to replace what was left of rock ‘n’ roll. In re-enacting a version of her rise in “A Star Is Born”, she layers the movie’s mythology.

Of course, this is finally a story of two human beings who love each other, through all the fights and drinking and public shambling, and that’s what’s so moving about it. Ally, despite everything Jackson puts her through, stands by her man, and does it out of feminist strength. She knows, of course, that there’s room for men and women in the new world. But the place Jackson comes from is a hierarchy, propped up by his boozy entitlement. On some level, he doesn’t want a life without either of those things: the booze or the entitlement. “A Star Is Born” is a great love story, but it’s also the story of a fall: Jackson’s fall, which is really the world’s fall from the garden of male reign. (RTRS)