Ryan McNeil
What happened to A STAR IS BORN?
Back in September, this film seemed to be on everybody’s lips. The Venice Film Festival and TIFF came together to premiere it to the world and everyone went…well…”Ga Ga” for it.
There was talk about it being an Oscar frontrunner, about GaGa herself being a potential Best Actress winner, about Bradley Cooper showing just how much he’d learned in front of the camera when time came to take his turn behind it. It was a remake that honoured its predecessors, gave fans of music in film one iconic song, and just seemed destined for greatness.
And then September turned to October, and October to November, and soon enough Awards Season was upon us. Nominations began getting announced, and A STAR IS BORN was constantly on the list…but it couldn’t seem to ever take a prize.
Finally, those nutty folks at The Golden Globes went and nominated the film as a drama…and it lost…and that seemed to be all she wrote for the onetime Oscar frontrunner. Talk of Best Director, Best Actress, Best Actor, or Best Picture soon simmered down to just Best Song (and make no mistake, this film is taking Best Song).
So, I ask again, what happened?
There was no scandal (which is more than we can say about two other Best Picture nominees!). There was no fleet of articles talking about how this character or that character weren’t nearly what they were made out to be on-screen. There was no shifting world order that made us rethink who we are and what we want in our art. Heck, there wasn’t even a viciously fought awards season campaign like we used to see back in the days of Miramax.
What happened was that the film just seemed to peak too early and burn too brightly.
When I wrote about BLACK PANTHER, I mentioned that most studios hold on to their true contenders until at least October. Now, sure there have been films like HURT LOCKER, GLADIATOR, and FORREST GUMP that have proven that films from earlier in the year can have some staying power…but by and large, studios worry about this very thing: that too much time goes by and the fire starts to dim to embers by the time Oscar Night rolls around.
Such was the fate of A STAR IS BORN.
Nothing happened to truly make the star fade into the night sky…but as the metaphoric night went on, it also never burned any brighter to set itself apart. GaGa and Ally became a bit more indistinguishable. Cooper didn’t seem to be overachieving as much as he seemed to be taking the next logical step. “Shallows” went from being an iconic scene in an iconic film to a song you hear anytime you pick up a double espresso.
It became a part of the pop culture lexicon the way that BLACK PANTHER did, but not in so singular a way.
This is not a bad film – far from it, in fact. If it did win Best Picture, it would certainly be a worthy recipient. However, at this point that looks like a stretch because the film’s contention has been…well…a stretch. Like a stock with a sky-high IPO that eventually crashed back down to earth, A STAR IS BORN wandered out far from the shallow…and never found its way back to shore.