Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 11/04/19

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Monday, November 4, 2019

A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018)

A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper, 2018)

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, Rafi Gavron, Anthony Ramos, Dave Chappelle. Screenplay: Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters, based on screenplays by Moss Hart, John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion, Frank Pierson, and a story by William A. Wellman and Robert Carson. Cinematography: Matthew Libatique. Production design: Karen Murphy. Film editing: Jay Cassidy.

I should admit from the outset that I resisted watching this movie until it finally reached the top of my queue of Movies I Should Watch. I thought remaking A Star Is Born was a bad idea back when it was going to be Clint Eastwood directing Beyoncé, and to a large extent I still do. The arc of the story, familiar from the three previous movies -- not to mention the fons et origo of them all, George Cukor's 1932 What Price Hollywood? -- leaves nothing to the curiosity except how Norman Maine (as he was called in 1937 and 1954 before becoming John Norman Howard in 1976 and Jackson Maine in 2018) is going to off himself so that Esther (who became Ally in 2018) can nobly go on with the show. And I still think that the remake does a disservice to the considerable talents of Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, who deserve fresher material. I'm also not a big fan of the hybrid country/rock/pop music the film is designed to showcase -- for my taste, the best musical moment in the film is when Lady Gaga sings the hell out of Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose." That said, I still enjoyed the movie, which manages to introduce some genuine moments amid the well-trodden ones. I like, for example, that instead of accidentally slugging Ally at the Grammys (as Norman did Esther in the 1937 and 1954 versions), he pisses himself onstage, an incident that deepens his shame beyond her embarrassment. I like the introduction of an older half-brother, Bobby (Sam Elliott, one of those actors who always make a movie a little better), which gives Jackson a strong backstory. It also provides an amusingly meta moment when Bobby accuses Jack of stealing his voice, which is what Cooper did when he lowered his own speaking voice to Elliott's bass-baritone. And Cooper and Lady Gaga generate some real heat onscreen, which couldn't be said of the Fredric March/Janet Gaynor, James Mason/Judy Garland, and Kris Kristofferson/Barbra Streisand pairings in the earlier films. There are those who think that Cooper carved out a little too much for himself at the expense of Lady Gaga's character, expanding his backstory as I've noted -- we don't learn as much about Ally except that she has a father who's a bit of a blowhard (amusingly played by Andrew Dice Clay). On the other hand, it's her first major movie and it shouldn't be her last.