By Emily Larkin, Managing and Online Editor
It is not often that I actually pay $15 for a ticket and popcorn and sit down in a movie theater to check out the latest sensation on the silver screen. So, when I do watch a movie, I expect it to change my life.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Martina and I decided to go see the highly-acclaimed movie ‘A Star is Born,’ per the recommendation of our good friends. At first, I was unsure of how a fourth- time remake of a movie could really be breathtakingly incredible, but soon I realized that ‘A Star is Born’ is the movie our generation needs right now. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Ally, played by Lady Gaga, is a mistreated waitress and a singer-songwriter who gets wrapped up with Jackson Maine, played by Bradley Cooper, who is a country artist struggling with a drug addiction.
During the first part of the movie, Ally bravely walks out on her waitressing job to take on something more in her life through her music. She teaches all of us to be confident enough to pursue our own dreams. Today’s world has such a great mentality of ‘Work hard. Get paid. Repeat.’ It is so hard to be confident enough to dive deep into your passions and let them take you for a ride.
Later on in the movie, Ally meets a music producer who completely changes her look and her music style from country to pop. Jackson realizes that Ally is being taken away from the music that she fell in love with at the start. It is not until the last number in the movie that she is drawn back to herself. Ally reflects the seemingly impossible lesson today: stay true to yourself. With all the influence of social media, being one person for the screen and another in real life is all too much of a reality nowadays.
After Jackson embarrasses Ally when she wins a Grammy, he goes to rehab. During the time Jackson is in rehab and during the aftermath, Ally sticks with him. She clearly presented the idea of what it means to hold onto those you love. So often today we see people who drop the person they are talking to for petty, insignificant reasons. Ally shows us that even in the worst of times, some people are worth not letting go of. Warning: major spoilers ahead.
The biggest lesson to come from ‘A Star is Born’ surrounds the suicide of Jackson toward the end of the movie. With rapidly growing suicide rates among college-aged students, I think it is so important that this movie showed the aftermath of Jackson’s suicide. It presented the perspective that no one is truly alone and that there are always people whose lives you have changed through your presence in this world.
Like Ally sings in the final song of the movie:
“And I want to pretend that it’s not true/ Oh baby, that you’re gone/ ‘Cause my world keeps turning, and turning, and turning/ And I’m not moving on.”
This movie took the shape of a mirror to show me what I need to do in my life to be better to myself and others. I hope in 25 years there will be another “A Star is Born” remake, so my kids will be able to learn lessons I am right now then.
PHOTO: ‘A STAR IS BORN’ stars Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. Courtesy photo, Vox.com
