Love is Born
I watched “A Star is born” recently and can’t stop thinking about this movie.
It’s a story that has been told in Hollywood many times already: that of a seasoned musician (Bradley Cooper), who discovers a talented girl (Lady Gaga). They start touring together and falling in love at the same time. And then she takes off by herself.
As I was watching it all, I was moved to tears (at the time not exactly knowing why). Now, I know that this will be my movie to put on when I really want to cry and don’t have a good reason to do it (nowadays, it’s “Brooklyn” that does the trick every time for me).
I read a few articles about the movie and one line I came across really made me think. In NYT, Bradley said: “People fall in love and begin to heal, but eventually it becomes clear that love cannot heal you completely”. And this sentence helped me realize the reason this movie hit me so hard. The Cooper/Gaga couple created this authentic and intimate relationship on screen that made me believe their love from their first scene together. It rarely happens that you are so captivated by a couple “you just met” (especially if they’re celebrities you “know” so well and whom you would have never paired together). You see this “real” feelings between them, this “pure” emotions that make you root for them from the beginning (against all odds). I just really wanted them to succeed. And I believed that they can do it. Whenever he was falling down, I wanted to lift him myself and help him carry on. But the deeper I went into the movie, the clearer it became that it’s not going to happen.
The reason it hit me so hard was exactly the thing Bradley said: it doesn’t matter how much love you offer to another person, how pure it is, or how unconditional – it all goes in vain if the person you direct those feelings towards is incapable of giving this love to oneself. If someone is not able to deal with their own demons and fears – there is not enough love in this world that can save this person. And that’s exactly why watching “A Star is born” was so difficult for me. I just felt their pain and I knew at the same time that nothing could be done. He just wasn’t ready to heal.
Music is a beautiful part of that movie. The soundtrack is a love story unto itself; it almost made me feel like I was watching a musical. There is this line in the song “Shallow” (the song I added to my playlist right away) “Tell me something, boy, Aren’t you tired tryin’ to fill that void?”; and it follows with: “In all the good times I find myself longing for change and in the bad times I fear myself”. I listened to those lyrics carefully later on that evening and my heart was just breaking apart. You can’t heal someone. You’re not able to fill someone’s void, even if you want to fill it with all the love you have. There is not enough love out there to deal with it.
There is this misconception that love will take care of everything. I believe it can start the change and the healing process. But it’s a bit delusional to think that meeting “the right person” will fix your problems. No one is able to save you except for yourself.
It will be difficult for me to watch this movie again, but I also know it will happen very soon. Maybe because of another line I remembered (from the second song I added to my list: “Always Remember Us This Way”): „The part of me that’s you will never die”. Because love can fill you up, even when it’s gone. And it can also leave you completely empty inside at the same time.
