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Never Doubt Thy Love: A Retrospective of ‘A Star Is Born’ (2018)
What can you do when you’re watching someone destroy himself from afar?
Content Warning: discussions of suicide and mental illness
I’ve never written down anything about my feelings for A Star Is Born (2018), starring Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga as star-crossed lovers Jackson and Ally. You would think I — who used to write reviews for everything I watched and read — would have jotted down some notes somewhere about this movie. But I didn’t. I never did. It was too painful.
Rather than go into a play-by-play of what happens in the movie, I’m instead going to write down my feelings over what happened in the film. The story is simple: a down-on-her-luck would-be creative named Ally works as a sex worker to make ends meet, but one night she meets country star Jackson through a serendipitous moment when she’s on stage. The two end up forming an instant connection. He reads her poetry that she hopes one day to make into songs, and he encourages her to share her music with the world. It’s not long before the two fall in love and collaborate on music together. Despite the odds against them, they manage to build a relationship on both personal and professional levels (though their egos, personalities, and goals clash at various points throughout…
