Maestro, please don’t be controversial. Since it’s the end of the year, I’ve got lots to do, so I don’t want this review to have to blow out to 2,500 words just to explain how and why it got under my skin 😄 I just want to say the movie is really good, or really bad, and get the hell out of here. Can we make that happen director Bradley Cooper, sir? Work with me, people! Although, yes, the new Bradley Cooper movie cannot be ignored, especially since there’s still a part of me buzzing off A Star is Born, and now I wonder if Carey Mulligan will prove Cooper’s new muse. The posters alone look very Oscar-baity, and Cooper has shown he can rise to the occasion if that is the objective. Let’s get wowed by Maestro.
Young and passionate composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) gets a call to lead an orchestra at Carnegie Hall for one night only. Soon after, he meets actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), forming an instant connection with her, and pushing his blatant homosexuality to the side, they marry sometime later. Leonard and Felicia try to juggle a life of family with one in the spotlight, but with Leonard always seeking quiet time for serious music exploration, and a few strange bed fellows, the years go by, and the couple grow further and further apart. This movie tenderly aims to get to the bottom of what their deep love means.
Unfortunately, I never completely got on board with the rhythm of Maestro. We are told about the struggles of the famous pair juggling their private and professional lives, but the movie almost takes place solely within their private lives, or inner moments, so I can’t connect with the external pressures that may exist from the outside world. I think I must’ve been a third through, still having the thought that Maestro is a bunch of nothingness – jazzy dialogue with an elevated focus on style and technique, but nothing really investing. I never meshed with the black and white component of this movie, and I think moments where there may’ve been CGI or matte painting enhancements, stand out like a sore thumb, only making it more apparent that we are no longer in yesteryear, as the movie is trying to replicate. Also, some movies are loud and proud on the person whom they’re about – they might state the accomplishments of the subject in question right up front, to center an audience on the importance of the character. For those aware of the name ‘Leonard Bernstein’ at first hearing it, wouldn’t have a problem, but there was for me, and I genuinely didn’t even know this was a biopic for way longer than usual 🤷♀️ I’m lucky at least, that I recognised the score from West Side Story, after it was mentioned that Leonard was the famed composer of that music, so that helped me gain some further appreciation for what’d gone into the construction of this movie too. But the movie gets more engaging as it jumps to colour, and even makes me wonder why more movies don’t utilise jumping through different cinematic aesthetics as they move through a fella’s life – the movie’s aspect ratio also changes as time passes, accommodating for wide screen. Yet I still clashed with the number of long shots held during tense moments of conversation! They’re everywhere! And they distance the viewer from the performances and drama at play. However, at the same time, the mise-en-scène is excellent. Maestro also captures the flow of typical conversation, with people talking over each other and so, but since the movie is so incredibly stylish, I think it would’ve benefited from a traditional script dynamic where beautiful dialogue can shine. So, I’m torn, between what is definitely an elegant movie, and the chosen presentation of the movie, dampening the potential of the character drama. What was that quote at the beginning of Maestro? “A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and it’s essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.” Maybe this movie is contradictory on purpose 🤷♂️
Although, through all this, Maestro’s make-up is impeccable. I’m not even entirely sure how it can be this good – is it due to a mixture of practical prosthetics and computer-age touch up? Because it comes across crystal clear, and seamless. I’m just trying to track my mind through the rest of the movies that have come out this year, because Maestro should win awards for best hair and make-up, and I can’t think of any real competition. I’m curious to know what Bradley Cooper would say, because I think the make-up helped his performance come across in the second half of the movie as well, and I wonder if he felt looser underneath it all. This is also to say, that whilst Cooper’s depiction of another true larger-than-life character didn’t impact me instantly, once the picture turned to colour, and Leonard was older, I could see the best of what Cooper’s performance was going for, and Cooper, quite rightly, disappeared. Dramatically, the movie certainly becomes more interesting after Leonard and Felicia break up, but that takes at least half the movie to get there. Eventually, at the lunch scene with the ladies, Mulligan is given her closeup, to detail a failed date, and there you go; that’s exactly what I’d been craving – something where I can get intimate with the acting on display. Mulligan’s subsequent depiction of cancer is heartbreaking. And she deserves applause just for the amount of smoke that gets blown in her face without flinching 😂 For the big song and dance I made of Myha’la grooving alongside the big players of Hollywood in Leave the World Behind, Maya Hawke is a sweet presence in a big movie too, although she has about an eighth as much to do.
You know another thing that’s funny? This movie bandies around ‘man’ more than once as a placeholder for something blunt, but whilst Maestro is set in the 1970s and further back, there isn’t one gay slur or harshness towards homosexuality to be found. It tiptoes around speaking about Leonard’s affairs, and it’s blatant with current day performatives, not of the time – it’s a subtle sting, but another, away from realism, enough to take me out of the movie. Maestro is strangely, hardly about Leonard’s career, but the weight of his personal life, not being able to be himself, and how it breaks a traditional marriage – and it took me a long while to see the direction the movie’s wheels were spinning, and value on the subject. Cooper has put a good deal of effort into stretching his artistic muscle, and that’s nothing to swish away. I would recommend Maestro, although, if for nothing else, it certainly doesn’t benefit from the following squeeze – Mank was a not-too-distant biopic, excellently elegant and stylised in black-and-white. Rustin came out last month and was fantastic, about a secretly not-so-discretely gay public figure as well. And Tár, from earlier this year, detailed the musical prowess and talent in conducting. Maestro would finish second-best to those three, on three different fronts.
3.5
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