How do you need to feel at the end of a movie to determine whether it is a good movie? Some people seek happiness at the end of a good movie. They watch it many times to relive that good mood again. Some believe that the more a movie makes you cry, the more successful it is. However, sometimes you can not know how that feels but still, you love the movie.

A Star is Born is in this category for me. Although it is a bit depressing, I love to watch it. I have listened to all of the soundtracks, watched all interviews with the actors about the movie. But neither of these convinced me to watch it twice. I did not have the courage to do that. Maybe it is because of the realization that this is not just a movie but the reality. The reality that I would like to change for all the world.

Jack is a famous singer who is struggling with alcoholism. Ally who works as a waitress is a singer and songwriter. But she could not have the courage to build a career on her talent. After Jack falls in love with her, he encourages Ally to sing her songs. While Ally takes his advice to advance her career, Jack’s alcohol addiction starts to destroy everything in their lives.

In the days when I watched this movie, I have been reading the book “Breaking Free from the Victim Trap”. In the book, the family and marriage therapist Diane Zimberoof speaks of dysfunctional families and their negative effects on relationships. According to her theory; there are 3 different roles in dysfunctional families; victim, rescuer, and prosecutor. The Prosecutor is the one who hurts family members by aggression, manipulation, emotional abuse. The Rescuer is the person who helps the victim and brings about reconciliation between the family members. As a common example; the prosecutor would be an abusive husband, the victim is the wife who is subjected to domestic violence.

Usually, the children would be the rescuers of their helpless mom. Sometimes people switch from role to role in the family but the existence of this victim triangle and its problematic relationships does not change until someone gets an awareness about it.

The children who grow up in dysfunctional families would carry their roles and all their negative effects on into their adult lives.
If you are a “rescuer”, you will always find someone as a victim around you who desperately needs your help.

On the other hand, if you are a victim, it makes you feel helpless and out of control. Instead of taking responsibility, you search for someone to rescue you, so maybe you have a dependent relationship with your partner or friend by putting them in the rescuer role.

In the movie, Jack’s character reminds me of the Victim role as in the book. He has everything, a good career, and popularity. He has a deep void filled inside his soul. Whatever he does, that void can not be fixed. In some scenes, we see that he had some issues with his father when he was young. Those problems caused the void but instead of facing the problem and solving it, Jack chose to drown his sorrows. Alcohol becomes his addiction to suppress his emotions. When addiction starts to take control of his life, he finds a love to take him out of that vicious circle. It was like love at first sight. It was true that they build a very deep, emotional, and strong connection.

However, according to the Victim triangle, their relationship might be a win-win the negotiation which has made by them subconsciously.
As a songwriter Ally is aware of her potential but she doesn’t have the courage and network to take a step for a better future. Jack supports her to build a huge career and in return, he needs her love and care to be sober.

The rescuer’s passion to help someone is about feeling the same desperation very deep in heart, says Diane Zimberoof in her book. In the meantime, as a characteristic of this role Rescuer represses her desperation by helping other people.

So maybe we can say Ally’s compassion for Jack comes from knowledge of being desperate once upon a time in the past. But even that much big lover’s compassion has a limit. Therapist Diane Zimboreff says that this limit may lead to failure: If the rescuer can’t rescue the victim, this time she feels like a victim of the helping situation. We can see this very clearly in Ally’s journey during the second half of the movie while Jack was hurting Ally’s emotions by destroying her career because of addiction.

I love watching movies and sharing my comments with others. Once, after I shared a comment about a very staggering movie, a friend asked me how I enjoyed such a traumatic story. Since then I have started to ask myself these questions as I asked you at the beginning What is the main thing for me to call a movie a good one?

The answer is that I don’t categorize movies depending on their emotional impact on me. Every movie is a journey. The character gets an invitation to an adventure, travels all along with the movie, has some struggles on the way, and passes all of them. In the end, the world is still the same but the character’s world has changed. She/he transforms into another person with a new point of view about life.

I believe that when I turn off the TV, the character’s journey may be finished but my journey starts at that time. For me, a good movie is the one that leads me to start my journey after writing “The End”, like A Star is Born.