Review: The magnificent tear of "A star is born"

What's exciting about "A star is born" is that Mr. Cooper knows he's telling one of Hollywood's hottest stories and gave the film the luster and scale it deserved. He plays with intimacy and cinematic scanning, getting closer when Ally and Jack are together for the world to disappear – a scene of them on a parking lot shows how the conversation turns on parade – and then retreat so that we can see the enormity. lovers live once Jack takes Ally on tour. And even if the crowd seems barely more blurry than the first time Jack plays, Ally looks at the crowd, she sees it and so do we.

The concert scenes of Jack and Ally playing are invigorated but personal. (The production has borrowed crowds from real music festivals like Coachella, and their size reflects the enormity of Jack's celebrity.) Mr. Cooper sings quite nicely and strangles an electric guitar with persuasive fervor. He is supported by Lukas Nelson & The Promise of the Real (Lukas' father is Willie Nelson). The music mixes standards and new songs, some of Mr. Cooper, Lukas Nelson and Lady Gaga, whose flexible and often electric song can at full speed express an intensity of feeling much better than the dialogue.

Like many filmmakers, Mr. Cooper sometimes explains too much. It's not enough for Jack to drink; Mr. Cooper wants us to know why. So, he recounts Jack's past, turning melodrama into therapy and robbing the character of mystery. One of the weakest scenes, a violent confrontation between Jack and his much older brother, Bobby (Sam Elliott, which Mr. Cooper borrowed), is a real dump of information. In one of the best, Bobby leaves Jack without a word, and Mr. Elliott lets you see the ferocity of the brothers' love – and their pain – in eyes that have started to get wet and in a stone face that will break.

Mr. Cooper spends more time on the main male role in the story than previous versions, perhaps because he played the role himself. The focus on Jack – he scrapes the bottom, goes into convalescence – makes the rest of the film a bit heavy, partly because too much film is too familiar. Sometimes Cooper seems to share Jack's discomfort with Ally's celebrity, especially after she connects to a manager (Rafi Gavron, oozing) and turns into a frenzied automaton with rhythms. without soul and substitute singers. Ally puts the mask Mr. Cooper removed from Lady Gaga, suggesting that, unlike Jack's, his art is not pure.

The self-enlargement of man is part of the foundation of history, but not ruinously. Jack does not help turn Ally into a star, giving her the great chance she needs. Her trauma – insecurity, but it is damaged – becomes a deep well that she draws from her resources, allowing her to become a bigger artist. In part, the story is as squeaky as that of Pygmalion, the male sculptor who turns a beloved sculpture into a woman. Yet, one of the pleasures of "A star is born" in all its interpretations is that it is also a woman whose ambitions are at the height of those of any man and who gets up while she cries and sing to a fabulous self and sovereignty.