DEEP AND SHALLOW 'A star is born'
Making our home with the people we care for, nothing else is important actually.
By Nevin Ulusoy
It had been a long time since I last went to the cinema. I think if I go to the cinema the film I watch must worth the time and money I spend and there aren’t many films like that on the screen. Then I heard this song ‘Shallow’, it was spinning in my head, I listened to it again and again. I dreamed about it all through the night. The film won the prize it deserved and I said I had to go and see this film, at the cinema. All the fasination of the white screen surrounded me, I dived in the film, I was a dreamer in a dreaming land, someone beyond myself, experienced all the things they experienced. It was difficult to leave that dark, nearly empty cinema, I had tears in my eyes, my heart was heavy. Then we watched the sunset beyond the sea, the sky was full of lights. We drank our coffee under the sky full of lights. The sea was dark and in my head was ‘Shallow’, giving me feelings ‘far from the shallow’.
“Freedom is very important but we must not be the slaves of our freedom. Some bonds are vital, we must not be free of the people we love, we care for.”
It is the first film Bradley Cooper directed and he is just marvellous as a director and actor in this film. He sings so lovely and we get all the feelings he wants to give. They are a perfect pair with Lady Gaga in the film. I cannot say that I particularly admire Lady Gaga much in her career as a singer and I would not go and see this film just to avoid watching her. But her singing and the parts of the film that are shown on youtube for ‘Shallow’ absolutely changed my mind. Even in those little parts it was so evident that she was beyond herself, just there to be the soul and body of a rising star. I definitely adore her acting and of course singing and want to thank her for adding our lives so much delight.
It was not a film that I could eat popcorn while watching, I could only breath. The first part was so bright, full of excitement in spite of the fact that we more or less knew what was going to happen. I cannot remember watching the 1976 version of the film, I was a child very interested in famous people then. So I had a vague impression of it when I watched the film. But the second part was too fast, everything happened all of a sudden, giving us the feelings of this couple actually, things happening to them before they could understand where these mad things were taking them to. We all love fame and glory stories, but they are sad ones actually, leaving us in the dark with gloom. ‘They’, other people never leave you alone to enjoy your life, however you like it to be.
I thought of Jim Morrison, the singer and writer of most of the songs of the late 1960s and early 1970s rock band The Doors a lot during the film and remembered the 1991 film with the same name by Oliver Stone. He is one of those singers who died at the age of 27. He did not commit suicide according to the doctor’s report, but there are lots of rumours about how and why he died. There are lots of rock stars, artists, poets and writers who died like him, but I had his image on my mind especially when Jackson fell asleep on the bed waiting for Ally. He was drinking too much as well, much more than Jackson. He was usually drunk on stage, a living Dionysus and that was what he was trying to be. There were things he was searching, feeling that what he was doing was not the thing he wanted in the end. Sometimes when we reach our goals, have something we have wanted a lot, we suddenly see that it does not make us so happy, or that something is lacking. Kurt Cobain could not hold on life, a life of a famous star, even with his daughter who he loved very much. With Morrison it was a search for experience as well, but who knows? Fame does not make people happy, it makes them sick rather. An empty life surrounds one, seeing and feeling everything that the world consists of deep down, everything evil, selfish and hostile.
‘Modern world’ is making us sick actually, all these shallow wars of earning money, fame, pleasure, tricking each other for these things, turning talented people into clowns they never want to be, turning them into money machines, spending our lives for these things that drown us. Cheers, spotlights, fame turned Ally into someone Jackson did not like. It was on the outlook only maybe, but still it hurt him. It is very difficult to find a reason to live when you are trapped by these things. Love is nearly extinct, caring for each other. You cannot talk about love if you want only pleasure. Love makes you suffer, it gives you pain, too. But it is worth it, that is what makes us human beings. Then we have a life worth living. David Foster Wallace says that if a person commits suicide, it means that person has already been dead and has not been aware of it. He might be right, but there can always be a way out. Unfortunately, Wallace committed suicide, too, later.
Freedom is very important but we must not be the slaves of our freedom. Some bonds are vital, we must not be free of the people we love, we care for. If our motto in life is ‘no ties’, then we are in the shallow. Diving deep is essential for life, deep in love, respect, trust and honesty. Making our home with the people we care for, nothing else is important actually. Looking at the glowing stars and the moon lighting our ways, I listen to ‘Shallow’ and try to catch the rythm of life.