Arts & Culture

Who’d have thought a show about the origins of a shyster/lawyer with a fake name whose clients are murderous drug dealers would turn out to be TV’s most satisfying depiction of an honest day’s work?

Its leads, feminist writer Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti), a one-time wunderkind of no-budget theatrical productions, find themselves desperate to conceive a child even as the doctors they pay (with borrowed money) thousands to speak frankly of the odds

The idea practically sells itself: Kevin Hart has to take night classes to get his high school degree, and Tiffany Haddish plays his suffer-no-bullshit teacher

To fall in love with A Star Is Born is to embrace these paradoxes and, to quote a song Gaga sings in the film, go “off the deep end” and submerge oneself “far from the shallow.”

The re-enactment and its subsequent cinematic portrayal were both the brainchild of Greene himself, and they mark the latest chapter in the career of a documentarian whose work keeps finding new ways to probe the gray area between authenticity and performance