I don’t think it was intentional, and I think that’s contingent on the final performance being better than it was.
These are great and should have been in the film.
I liked this movie quite a lot. Like most folks I did enjoy the first half better than the second. I’m not sure if you can tell the story the way Cooper wanted to and not have the second half slow down and fail to match the first half. I finished watching it about two hours ago so I still need to think about it more.
Guess I’m a bit late here, but just saw this and found it excellent. I also noticed the arc of the quality of music, and also think it was wholly intentional - and had the desired impact/message in the story.
Edit: At the end it blew me away that this was also directed by Bradley Cooper.
Thanks for reviving this thread. I had totally forgotten about the existence of this movie. I’ll try to track it using one of these fancy movie tracking websites now.