The Power of Words.
“Aren't you tired trying to fill that void?”
With that question, were plunged into a vulnerable story, where words inspire or shatter self worth.We live in a time that echoes of the past, where rhetoric creates divisiveness. For Jackson Maine, words... were all it took to push him over into darkness. But the story is also about the absence of words. When you’re life is neglected. When a 12 year old boy tries to take his own life and nobody notices... its heart wrenching.
So what happens when you’ve collected conflicting emotions for so long and never untangled those feelings. The weight of the broken relationships on our soul becomes unbearable. And while music can be an outlet, it’s never a permanent solution. Nothing substitutes the power people have at filling a void. Ally becomes that for Jack.
Every word of every song they sing together shock and absorb you into a state of intense intimacy that you’re left feeling magical yet uncomfortable not because it’s bad in any way but because its too genuine.
The vulnerability and protectiveness Jack and Ally have over each other is something I can’t remember experiencing in a cinema for some time. It made me glow when they sang together, root for them when they struggled and empathize with their complexities when they made difficult decisions, without ever judging them.
I found myself thinking about La La Land a few times while watching this story unfold, not stylistically but structurally. In La La Land, they're both dreamers who choose to pursue and focus their energies together to push each other forward but they also both reach a point in the story where rejection and compromise define them. And then there was that dinner scene with Seb and Mia, which mirrored the bathtub scene for Jack and Ally. The central question of artistic expression vs commercial success resurfaced.
And the ending... unlike La La Land, their break at the end is not a symbolic sacrifice for ambition, but a physical sacrifice out of love. While they are 2 very different treatments, it was hard to ignore the thematic parallels. In La La Land the antagonist and protagonist is their love for one another.
In A Star is Born, the antagonist is internalized in our inability to confront self worth. When Jack falls in Love with Ally, he loves her so fully that he has no room left to love himself, if he ever did. And for Ally, Jack sees her true self and loves him for it. It’s an unforgettable story. A constant reminder that words can be magical, when sung or to bludgeon us when we’re already broken.
It’s a tragic story on how the trauma we carry can shape us or end us.
