4 minute read
A Movie Star is Born
LAST WEEK, LADY GAGA announced that “Shallow,” the hit single from the new film A Star is
Born had been released on Spotify, and I’ve been listening to little else since. It’s a slow-burn duet, performed by both of the film’s stars, Bradley Cooper and Gaga, and in addition to being a powerhouse ballad, it’s also one of film’s best and most joyous moments.
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Rockabilly star Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper) has already met young Ally (Lady Gaga) at a gay bar after one of his concerts. They go for drinks, and he is immediately smitten with her and her songwriting chops, though Ally admits she never sings her own songs because the music industry “loves how she sounds, but hates how she looks.” Though it takes some coaxing, Maine manages to get his driver to bring Ally, via private jet, to his gig the next night, and bring her backstage. Ally can scarcely believe what’s happening to her. She’s standing in the wings when Maine walks over and tells her that he has arranged a song she’d sung pieces of the night before. He wants her to sing it. She protests.
“I’m singing it either way,” he says, and shrugs playfully.
But Maine’s aim is not to steal
Ally’s song; he wants to celebrate her talent, to showcase an artist who has moved him. (He’s an alcoholic who hasn’t found much joy in performing in some time.) “Shallow” begins, and Cooper, who affects a gravelly twang in his dialogue, acquits himself admirably on the mic. Ally, in disbelief, psyches herself out and joins him on stage to perform her song, taking over the second verse and then the soaring chorus and bridge. (While you’ll have to suspend your disbelief with respect to the successful arrangement and the impromptu harmonies, it’s an incredible moment.) The film opens Friday in wide release and is an early buzzy favorite for this year’s award season.
The film, then, focuses on Ally’s rise and Maine’s decline. After touring with Maine and performing a solo encore that brings down the house, Ally gets noticed by a major producer and soon becomes a pop sensation. Maine descends further into alcoholism and, soon, musical irrelevance. Their love is complicated by what Maine perceives as Ally’s selling out, and by Maine’s own boorish behavior under the influence of substances. Punctuated by Lady Gaga’s showstopping vocals and by more
than one devastating scene of embarrassment brought on by drunkenness, the film presents a uniquely complicated love story that also portrays celebrities as sympathetic human beings. The film is a remake of a familiar story. Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand both played the Gaga role in earlier versions. It is also Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut. He received an Oscar nod for his turn as the mentally unstable protagonist in Silver Linings Playbook, and may nab another for his performance here,
as a man damaged and salvaged in other ways. His twang never stops sounding like a “voice,” but he is redeemed in his desperate adoration of Ally. Lady Gaga, rest assured, is just as magnetic on screen as she is on stage. One can’t help seeing Gaga herself in her character: a working-class girl beloved by outcasts with a voice as vast and mighty as the Pacific.
SPOTLIGHT: CLEVELAND JEWISH FILMFEST
NOW IN ITS 12TH YEAR, THE Cleveland Jewish FilmFest aims to bring the best of international Jewish cinema to Cleveland. It features a mix of documentaries, features, comedies and shorts, and films will screen at five local theaters and venues.
The event kicks off on Thursday with a screening of The Last Suit at 7 p.m. at Shaker Square Cinemas. The drama tells the story of an 88-yearold Holocaust survivor who travels across Europe to Poland as part of a promise to a friend who helped him escape. A dessert reception takes place in the lobby after the screening.
Another highlight, the documentary Let’s Dance, shows how
modern dance has become one of Israel’s greatest cultural achievements. It screens at 1 p.m. on Friday at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
At 10 a.m. on Sunday, the Cedar Lee Theatre hosts a screening of Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me, a new documentary about the late singer and actor who converted to Judaism in 1954. A drama set in Paris in 1941, Bag of Marbles centers on two young Jewish brothers who try to escape persecution by fleeing to a demilitarized zone. It screens at 2 p.m. on Sunday at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
A new documentary about the small group of Israelis and Palestinians who met secretly in Norway in 1992, The Oslo Diaries
screens at 1 p.m. on Monday at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Who Will Write Our History, a documentary about the Warsaw Ghetto, screens that same day at 7:30 p.m. at the Cedar Lee Theatre. The Invisibles, a drama which shows at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday at the Cedar Lee Theatre, centers on the 7,000 Jews who lived in Berlin in 1943 after Germany declared the city to be “free of Jews.”
As part of a “classic” series, the 1975 drama Hester Street, a “poignant recreation of Jewish life at the turn of the 20th century,” screens at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 11, at the Cedar Lee Theatre.
The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque hosts a screening of
the 2017 drama Promise at Dawn at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 13, and the Atlas Theatre shows the documentary Mossad: Imperfect Spies at 10 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 14.
The festival closes on Sunday, Oct. 14, with a screening of Heading Home: The Tale of Team Israel, a movie about how the Israeli team qualified for the 2017 World Baseball Classic. It screens at 7 p.m. at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Beachwood’s Brad Goldberg, who played for Team Israel and currently plays for the Arizona Diamondbacks, is featured in the movie. — Jeff Niesel
By Sam Allard
