by Heath Lynch, Contributing Writer
Back in 2018, Bradley Cooper made his directorial debut with his remake of A Star is Born. It dazzled audiences and critics alike. The film grossed $215.3 million at the domestic box office, and a total of $436.2 million worldwide. It also garnered eight Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture, and took home the gold for Original Song, Lady Gaga’s “Shallow.” The film bumped Cooper’s personal running total of Oscar noms up to nine, with four of them being acting noms. The pedigree behind this man has become undeniable. Now, Cooper has brought us his sophomore directorial effort, Maestro, but with it, I sense a change in the wind. Unfortunately, for all of its promise, Maestro is an interesting but flawed film in which you can feel that Cooper’s quest for Oscar gold has consumed him.
Telling the tale of America’s first native born, world-renowned conductor, Leonard Bernstein, Maestro has the foundation it needs to captivate audiences and excel as a film. This is a story that should be told, and one that most people are unfamiliar with. That’s an enticing combination. Yet the unfocused nature of the film, covering such a large breadth of years between 1943 and 1987, tries to showcase Bernstein’s career, his talents, his accomplishments, as well as his relationships with his wife, his daughter, and his sexual partners. Unfortunately, the film’s attempts to cover so many topics, while only offering surface level explorations, makes the film become cold and distant to all that it’s trying to say and achieve. And the timeline and pacing are so lackadaisical that it’s difficult to get invested. More importantly, it never shows us what made Bernstein, Bernstein. Just, instead, that he was Bernstein.
We never see what makes Bernstein such an accomplished composer and conductor. We don’t understand his brilliance, what makes his understanding of musical theory so superior to others, or anything of the sort. The film never explores why he’s so talented and what makes him so damn good — it just shows him being good. We never truly explore his sexuality or his struggles — it just shows his desires with no introspection. Was he ever actually sexually attracted to his wife, or did he just find her interesting and see her as a beard? Or was he bisexual, and simply had a problem with infidelity? We have no idea how he felt about concealing his affections towards men, other than a glimpse of a conversation regarding his daughter’s knowledge. Did he do this to spare social stigma, or to protect his career? Who knows, and the film has no interest in exploring the matter.
Worse, the relationship at the core of this film between Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), is woefully mishandled. We see infatuation and a desperate need for companionship, but the curtain is never pulled back to explore how these two operated. Important conversations, like Felicia and Leonard coming to terms with Leonard’s infidelity and homosexuality, are largely left on the cutting room floor. We get beautiful character moments between the two, like pretending to act on stage together, or playfully asking questions of one another while relaxing in a park, but we rarely get any character development with them. We don’t understand their relationship — we just see it from a distance. There is one excellent scene during a Thanksgiving parade in which we finally get some insight as to how these two people felt about each other, how they challenged one another, and the problems they faced, but it’s a fleeting moment. Glorious in an instant, but then never approached in that manner again the rest of the film. I wish we got more pathos or understanding, but over and over we just see Bernstein simply existing. It’s all surface level.
While the film struggles to make good on its possibilities regarding message and theme, there are still plenty of aspects here worth enjoying. Maestro is undeniably visually stunning, showcasing some gorgeous cinematography. Many of these black-and-white frames could be hung on a wall, and the lighting is stunning. While I’m not sold on Cooper’s performance, which sometimes feels like a caricature of an imitation, instead of sincere biopic impression, he’s at least passionate about what he’s putting on screen. You can tell he studied Bernstein a lot, and that this is important to him. It’s just unfortunate that he gets a little over-the-top at times, where you can feel that desperation to earn an Oscar. One scene, in which he yells at a baby about having had sex with both of their parents, is so egregious that it just made me laugh; but not in the way the movie intended. Instead, in a, “What the hell was that?!” kind of way. Not good. However, Cooper does absolutely crush it in a church performance sequence. In fact, that scene is the highlight of the film for me, and it was the closest the film came to moving me in any reasonable way, so props to him for that.
But as much as Cooper is hit-or-miss, Mulligan is absolutely tremendous. Hitting 100% of the time. She’s doing some capital A Acting, dancing in circles around everyone else in the film. In many ways, even though Maestro is about Bernstein, it is really her story, and it’s notable that she’s the top-billed actor on the one sheet. The empathy that she provides is astounding, and her loss is rightfully the climax of the film. I sincerely hope, and predict, that Mulligan will be nominated for, and win, many accolades for her work. She deserves them all.
You’ve also got to love the use of Bernstein’s music from his musicals like On the Town and West Side Story, and so much more, incorporated throughout the score alongside the works of the world’s great composers such as Mahler and Beethoven. The subtlety of the production design, the costumes of the era, and the editing are also all quite slick. Frankly, there’s a lot to appreciate.
When everything congeals together, Maestro ends up being a fairly standard flick. It’s a biopic that feels like it was ready made for the Oscars, and is not nearly as challenging or interesting as it, or Cooper, presents it as being. Unironically, I know more about the Cheetos guy from Flamin’ Hot than I know about Bernstein after watching Maestro, and the former was based on a lie! But outside of the failed biopic lens, Maestro is a visually stunning film with powerful performances and a couple of arresting scenes that will captivate you like few others this awards season. Damnit, I wanted so much more out of it, because we could’ve achieved greatness, whereas what we got is just okay.
Rating: It Was Just Okay
Maestro is currently streaming on Netflix
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