Lady Gaga hunt Bradley Cooper.

For an urtext that connects the Hollywood musical and the Hollywood melodrama – these two mostly feminine genres of American film – the gender dynamics at the heart of A star is born has been strangely shifted for eight decades and four iterations. Or maybe not so strangely, if you remember that this story about the triumph of a woman's self-expression always takes place under male domination, both on screen and in in the wings. Even if the title tells us that it is about the rise of a feminine talent, the real narrative engine is the fall of the man, caused by the addiction and the anger, that the woman must undergo to assume the cost personal fulfillment.

The public accepts it and even adopts it because it feels archetypically true, a replica of all that women give up in a negotiation that will last a lifetime with a male world. The fact that it survived intact is at the origin of the overwhelming and ugly relief of the final scene, producing tears, as emblematic of the 2018 version. But until then, the man at the center of the Tragedy gets the lion's share of the best scenes and lines. Since Judy Garland's takeover of the woman's first musical version in 1954, the music is what she has the woman – music, in a sense, as a force that escapes the injustice of power and power. pragmatism of the real world.

So there is a poetic justice, listening to the soundtrack of the new A star is born, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Lady Gaga and himself, to the fact that all that is impressive about the performance on the screen of Cooper fades here. Meanwhile, Gaga enjoys some of the most amazing musical moments of his career.

But it also means that the album is shifted in the opposite direction. In the movie, it's a disarming surprise how much the guy from the Hangover movies and Reading book of silver liners Acknowledges as a credible musician. This illusion does not survive the translation into an audio only experience. Aside from the solo soundtrack "Maybe It's Time," provided by the superb composer Jason Isbell in a style reminiscent of the grand spirit of Grand Townes Van Zandt, Cooper's features on the band -It are mostly gray areas on which you have to sit. waiting for Gaga to come back.

Most of the country rock censored to be good is actually duller and dumber than Gaga's "bestseller", the most exaggerated and sensible to be bad. tracks.

In the movie, it's pretty easy to forget the fact that Cooper's Maine character, Jackson Maine – is more or less a rehearsal (or, as one critical friend put it, a "cover version") from Kris Kristofferson's 1976 country-rocker character. A star is born with Barbra Streisand – makes little sense as a figure of the world of music in 2018, even with his best days a little behind him. He would be a Nashville star, or rather an American cult artist, and not the rock idol appearing to Coachella as he claims. So, he would be an unlikely point of contact between the world of the hit parade and the talented singer but previously without luck from Gaga, Ally. Instead of Kristofferson, it might have seemed more contemporary if Cooper had been able to choose, for example, an endangered indie-rock phenomenon, like Jack White. Imagine the effect on his character of a large black headdress and a red and white vintage garment, a little more city frowning.

Kristofferson, who was celebrating his hour of glory as a country star out-of-law in the mid-1970s, was also able to deliberately play mediocre, to indicate the degradation of his character and you give the feeling that there is greatness behind it. Cooper, trying to sound credible, can not afford to do the same. And while this does not interfere with the drama, it means that when you listen to Cooper outside of the movie, his performances turn out to be passable. These are unconditional versions of Led Zeppelin, Grateful Dead or Kristofferson himself. These songs are mostly co-creations with Lukas Nelson, son of Willie and leader of the group Promise of the Real, better known as support group for Neil Young. Nelson also participated in the supervision of other music for the film, but fortunately he recruited much stronger composers for the most important numbers.

The best that can be said for Cooper is that it does not hurt as a duet partner for Gaga on their songs together, and this is a huge relief because one of the most gratifying elements of the new film is their very realistic realism of related souls, including as co-authors – it presents some of the most compelling music collaboration scenes since 2007 Music and lyrics with (from all people) Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant.

All of these factors help to balance the conceptual flaw noted by several observers in the film, namely that it tends to subscribe to an outdated and still ill-founded idea of ​​musical authenticity that considers writing as superior to performance, pleasure less worthy than misery, and implicitly, femininity is more artificial than masculinity. On the soundtrack, most of Cooper's songs meant to be good rock are actually darker than the most exaggerated tracks supposed to be of popular Gaga pop, like "Why Did You Do That?" And "Hair Body Face" (both attributed in part to one of Gaga's main partners in his own phase of poppiest, DJ White Shadow) .This belies the never-ending wicked dialogue in the film where Cooper insists on that writing Ally "has to say" is the only value that counts, and Sam Elliott, as Cooper's older brother, in a later scene, evokes an idea of the music and the deeper interpretation of this record, what emerges from the best musical moments of the film and the soundtrack is actually a synthesis, where every part of the person, including pretense and sincerity , scenography and self-revelation, is mobilized to release all the possible register of emotions.

"Always Remember Us This Way" is the song that Gaga was looking for Joanne.

Of course, the mere fact of asking Lady Gaga to play the role of Streisand herself determines this, since her entire character was built on fuzzy distinctions between the so-called fake and the real-inspirational d & rsquo; Andy Warhol, David Bowie, Madonna and many others claim that the ego can be found by being someone else. The fact that we meet her for the first time in a bar, the only woman welcomed (even authorized) on the bill by the queens of the place, immediately underlines this message. The performance that she gives out there from Edith Piaf's "Life in Pink" is the film's first great musical moment and one of the most memorable, standing exactly at the same time. place of Judy Garland's historical reproduction of Ira Gershwin and Judy Garland's "The Man That Got Away". in the 1954 film, which takes place in an open bar after closing hours, where his jazz band went to jam after their paid concert. This is where Norman Maine of James Mason is the first to be captivated by his voice, just as Jackson in his Maine is caught with Gaga at the drag bar. The crucial difference lies in the fact that, even though Garland is in private and that she lets him "real" come out, Jack Seeing Ally play almost like a drag queen, the layers of genre performance (and fake eyebrows) testify to a larger and less rigid idea of ​​truth. But Gaga's recent career testifies to the fact that she struggled on both sides of the equation, pulling out of her past. artpop concept of singing standards with Tony Bennett and singing autobiographical rock country on his latest album Joanne that often, in retrospect, seems to foreshadow the hybrid pop-ballad style, it works to its best effect in some A star is born.

Unfortunately, the version of "La Vie en Rose" that we hear on the soundtrack does not have as much effect as it is on the screen, precisely because it's the same. It was an excellent decision for the film to use live performances, rather than studio shots, so that they feel grounded in the situation. But for listening at home, this means that the audio quality is uneven and a little distant. But with the Lamer Cooper tracks and the included movie dialogue excerpts between the songs (which work really well and are not as hard to slow down as you might guess by looking at the track list), makes the soundtrack more a souvenir of the film that an isolated work. This technique has been used in many soundtracks of movies and music scenes, but it is rarely the albums that have a good performance. Streisand and Kristofferson did not do it for their A star is born soundtrack, and given Gaga's huge star power (albeit somewhat diminished), she may disappoint her fans looking for a definitive new album here. I am very happy to have both the screen and studio versions (the last as a bonus track) of the excellent climax song, "I'll Never Love Again" , but it makes me wish that I also have sharper and more punchy recordings. "Shallow" and "Always Remember Us This Way", one of the best materials of the soundtrack.

The former has already thrilled audiences as a key sounding moment in the movie's trailer – the song that gives Ally her first thrill to the world after being dragged on stage by Jack. It is a perfect combination of rooting and Gaga-ness, recalling its sound signature of former stammers and alliterative ("Poker Face", "Paparazzi") via the choir "Sha-shal-la-la-la-low" " But his couplets also combine a solid 1970s musical composition with a more modern vernacular, including my favorite phrase in any song directed from Ally to Jack: "Is not it hard to keep it so hardcore? "

But in "Always remember us this way," Gaga sounds perfectly like herself, but lets her voice rise even higher, as she has done from the beginning. A star is born, thanks to a bit of Hollywood fairy dust and a scene that allows her to show herself even more than usual – with which, as a daring vocal assassin, she annihilates all those who only remember the dress in meat and are also close to Streisand's plane (Garland is not as sorry as any current pop singer, we also have a song created by a group of talented Nashville murderers, including songwriters Natalie Hemby ( a maid of Miranda Lambert) and Lori McKenna (too successful to be named), as well as producer Dave Cobb (facilitator of Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, and Isbell) Channeled in Gaga's throat, he feels immediately This is the song she was looking for on Joanne, as well as the one that marks the pivot point of everything Star is born: Our protagonists synchronized, their ambitions aligned, their soul enriched by their union, but with an innate knowledge that it can not last: "When the sun goes down / And the band does not play / I will always remember us way."

Everything is downhill from there. But they could never have been as high, as extraordinary, so profoundly stupid as all together. It is a myth, an elevation of ordinary disappointments in grandeur. And it may be hurtful. Yet, in a song like this, we hear how much we want it and desperately need it. We hear what keeps him forever. That said, it can be argued that Gaga has expressed it better at least once before. Yes A star is born must always be redone, give it a more appropriate title: A Bad Romance.