"Maybe it's time to let the old ways die", sings the aging rock star Jackson Maine - and bravely picks up the strings of his guitar: Maybe it's time to go new ways. But why? For Maine, who always wears a cowboy hat, just not on stage, because he's there, and only there, emotionally nude, it's going pretty well. Right in the first scene of "A Star Is Born" you can see him performing in a loud Southern Rock in front of an arena audience. As if this retro sound from Eagles and Allman Brothers in 2018 would still be so attractive.

But in films of this kind, it's all about illusions, and Bradley Cooper, who plays fame-tinged old-school Maine with a deep Southern accent, beard and shaggy hair, proves to be a suggestive storyteller in his first work as a director and scriptwriter. So emotionally transported he transports his rock star ballad, in addition to Cooper and the pop singer Lady Gaga, that the US press since the premiere at the festivals in Venice and Toronto no longer comes out of swarms. Already at the beginning of the Oscar season, it is certain that Cooper will be among the favorites with "A Star Is Born": Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Camera (Matthew Libatique, "Black Swan") , best song, all this could be in the coming February. Let's wait.

The enthusiasm for this classic music film, whose story already in 1937, 1954 and 1976 tells in Hollywood cinema and was last updated in 2013 with John Carney's "Begin Again", may be explained by the fact that Cooper does not let the "old ways" die in the On the contrary, he tells a presumably very personal, but basically stale saga about the soul-healing power of music and love: His Jackson Maine is heavy on his alcohol addiction and family demons until he - in a queer bar full of drag queens - the young singer Ally (Gaga) discovered.

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"A Star Is Born": Rock'n'Roll Romance

Soon after, the talented but desponding songwriter and the life-weary rocker fell in love - and the stunning spontaneous duet with one of Ally's songs (written by Gaga with Cooper) cheered the mass audience: a new star was born, while the one who was already dying , tinnitus-plagued Maine may still glow a bit in the glow of his discovery. Until it comes to ugly implosions, of course.

Cooper and Gaga, who also gave themselves on the accompanying PR tour as a unit of heart and soul, play so effortlessly and intimately on the screen that this compelling chemistry alone carries the film very far. Gaga, or Stefani Germanotta, as the 32-year-old is bourgeois, uses the stage that offers her Cooper to complete their recent image change from the furious pop-art creature in the meat costume to the supposedly vulnerable song poet: It shows in supposedly unvarnished naturalness - and proves that she is a good actress in addition to all musical talent. A late triumph for the former Strasberg student, who at the beginning of her career initially unsuccessful as an actress applied - and then opted for the music.

Cooper makes Gaga sparkle, both in concert, as well as in the love and suffering scenes. But unlike the earlier versions, which were also show vehicles for the pop stars Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, here is not the singer of the star, but the old rocker with his nostalgic notions of true, sincere art: Cooper, intense and present to the point of egomania, little is interested in the current pop business and thus the world in which Lady Gaga has largely worked her way up to the icon.

A Star Is Born

USA 2018
Director: Bradley Cooper
Screenplay: Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters, Eric Roth
Performers: Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, Andrew Dice Clay, Sam Elliott, Anthony Ramos, Rafi Gavron, Dave Chappelle
Production: Warner Bros. Pictures, Live Nation Entertainment, MGM and others
Rental: Warner Bros.
Length: 136 minutes
FSK: from 12
Start: 4th of October

As Ally, influenced by a manager disgust from England (Rafi Gavron) leaves the realm of handmade music in favor of a contemporary, but denimoniously silly staged electro pop performance and surpasses Maines popularity, the film focuses almost exclusively on Cooper's exploration of his depressive and self-destructive figure.

In the video: The trailer for "A Star is Born"

Video

Clay Enos / Warner Bros.

The moment that it gets interesting and something new, such as the struggle of female artists for self-determination, could be told, the director steals nearly every scene from his protagonist - right down to a gig at the Grammys where he literally steals her pissing in the parade. Even in the tragic finale, he ensures that his broken-romantic rock'n'roll myth remains a shadow on their future career.

That's not too progressive, and you could read a lot about the backlashes of male dominance in the entertainment biz in the lewdness and sentimentality of "A Star Is Born." But that would do Bradley Cooper wrong. The actor, who became a star with the "Hangover" films, prepared his directorial debut for years with obsessive passion and meticulousness. With his old-fashioned bow to the excesses of the macho cinema of the New Hollywood era, he simply - and ultimately also moving - does his heart-thing. In the clever businesswoman Lady Gaga, he found a dedicated partner, who will also inspire a young audience for this ancient story. Let the old ways die? Maybe the next remake.