Maestro

Given that it is only Bradley Cooper’s second feature as a director (he made a strong showing with his 2018 debut and box office hit, A Star is Born) one would have to say that his Leonard Bernstein bio-pic, Maestro, is a pretty good film. That he had Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg (who originally was going to direct) to help him along as co-producers was not necessarily a good thing as the qualities his film needed, restraint and nuance, are qualities with which neither of those heavy-hitters are particularly familiar. It probably didn’t help that he was also a producer, co-writer and star. The result suggests that Cooper the director (a role which could be called "conductor") decided that his larger-than-life subject needed a similarly-scaled treatment and Cooper the star (which Bernstein was in post-war American classical music) saw an opportunity for glory and ran with it.

Opening with a present-day (in film time, the late ‘70s/early '80s) interview in which he reminisces on his abiding love for his deceased wife, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), Cooper is straight out-of-the gate with a striking tracking shot (Citizen Kane anyone?) underscored by a thunderous passage from Bernstein’s score for On The  Waterfront (1954). This takes us from Bernstein in bed with a young man to the stage of Carnegie Hall where, replacing  celebrated conductor, Bruno Walter, for a rapturously received national radio broadcast by the New York Philharmonic, Bernstein’s rise to fame begins.

Cooper and co-writer Josh Singer take Bernstein’s career as a matter of record using brief chronological extracts from his catalogue to punctuate the narrative which focuses on Bernstein’s slowly developing relationship with Montealegre whom he marries in 1951. She gives up a promising career as a television actress to raise their three children during which time Bernstein has numerous affairs and flings with men. Despite Montealegre’s acceptance of Bernstein’s homosexuality she becomes increasingly frustrated by his infidelities. Bernstein leaves her in the '70s but returns to look after her when she is diagnosed with lung cancer. She died aged 56 in 1978.

As director Cooper shows a good deal of visual story-telling panache. This is so particularly in the first third of the film which is shot in shimmering, high-contrast 35mm black and white by Matthew Libatique who was Cooper’s D.O.P. for A Star is Born. Thus, beside the bravura opening shot already mentioned, there is a lively fantasy sequence taken from On The Town (1949) and good use made of visual effects to depict the growing gap between the couple.

Mulligan gives what is probably her best screen performance since her eye-catching break-through in Lone Sherfig’s An Education (2009), her inherent poise and winsome reserve being the perfect counterpoint to Cooper’s scenery-chewing exuberance. One can only wonder, however, why in scene in which Felicia gives Leonard a piece of her mind. a scene which would seem perfect for some editing punch, Cooper keeps it locked off in an impersonal single long shot. On the other hand, a scene late in the film when Felicia is dying of cancer but trying to play hostess to some society friends (a practice which used to be called, appropriately, "keeping up appearances") and the camera moves slowly toward Mulligan's delicate features, the physical and psychological pain Felicia is experiencing is sadly touching.

Cooper, the actor plays to Bernstein’s legendary lust for life with a pedal-to-the-metal performance that is obviously tilting at a Best Actor Oscar (he was nominated but lost to Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer). He has clearly spent a lot of time studying all the available archival footage of Bernstein (including six years on learning the correct conducting moves!) and with the aid of Kazu Hiro’s remarkable prosthetic make-up (Hiro already has two golden boys for Darkest Hour (2017) Bombshell (2019) that ages him flawlessly, his Bernstein is a marvellous facsimile of the iconic conductor.

As, however, with Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022) this attention-grabbing verisimilitude is a double-edged sword. In playing to Bernstein's well-known public persona Cooper never goes beyond the legend to probe what must have been a complicated character. Even in the bookends which are meant to establish Bernstein’s genuine love of Felicia (as opposed to love of himself and other men) feel contrived for posterity. Some pause to reflect may have yielded greater gains. As it is we never really understand what drives Bernstein or what makes him such an important figure in classical music. In this respect the prosthetic mask Cooper wears functions symbolically and literally as a facade that, ironically, obscures his subject rather than dis-covers it.

Like Elvis too, Maestro was made with the agreement of the composer’s estate. Whilst the film does not try to airbrush Bernstein’s homosexuality out of the picture (he remained in the closet until his death in 1990) it does sideline it. This feels rather odd in our post-#MeToo era. Equally the possibility that Bernstein married Montealegre as a cover-up for his promiscuity in the super-straight ‘50s is never addressed. With the film literally jumping over fifteen years from the late '50s to the early '70s one cannot help but think there is a lot that has been omitted for the sake of mythologising Bernstein.

Whilst Maestro is a tip-top production on which the care lavished on period authenticity is evident (the credits include 114 people in the make-up department alone!) unless you are familiar with classical music (which Cooper is) in general and Bernstein’s contribution to it in particular, dramatically it is very much an arm's length affair.

FYI: If you would like to see thematically-related material dealt with more engagingly check out Todd Field's Tár (2022) and Irwin Winkler’s De-Lovely (2004). 

Bernstein's public image in the '70s was of such heft that would-be Nixon assassin, Sam Bycke, made tape recordings of his ideas and sent them to Bernstein immediately before his tragic attempt to carry out his plan. For more on the subject see The Assassination Of Richard Nixon (2004).

 

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