Maestro (2023)

Maestro-(2023)
Maestro (2023)

Maestro

“Maestro” is told by Bradley Cooper in the most traditional way through the familiar tropes and linear narrative of a standard biopic about a generation-defining artistic innovator.

Cooper directs and stars as legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in a film that’s technically dazzling but emotionally frustrating. The script, which he co-wrote with Josh Singer (“Spotlight”), follows an episodic path this happened, then this happened, then this happened that’s been well trod. Ultimately, it falls into the same trap as so many biopics, especially prestige pictures with major award aspirations: In covering such a huge swath of an extremely famous person’s life, it ends up feeling superficial.

And yet you should see it. Yes, that’s contradictory. But “Maestro” is so consistently stunning from an aesthetic standpoint that it’s worth watching. The cinematography! The costumes! The production design! They’re all evocative and precise as they evolve with the times over 40 some odd years of Bernstein’s life. Cooper takes a big swing behind the camera in making you feel as if you’re watching a movie that was made in the ’40s and continues to do so with each era; shooting in high contrast black and white and Academy ratio (Matthew Libatique, an Oscar nominee as DP on Cooper’s debut feature “A Star Is Born,” works wonders with one light bulb on a barren stage), for example. There’s a shot where Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre who will become Bernstein’s wife steps off a bus at night and walks up the street to the party where she’ll meet him for the first time, and it’s breathtaking in its cinematic authenticity. The lush Technicolor of scenes set in the ‘60s and ’70 offers its own vibrant allure. And inspired transitions from editor Michelle Tesoro carry the story across time and place in thrilling fashion.

Cooper has clearly taken great care in getting the details right, big and small. That includes spending six years learning how to conduct to perfect a particularly essential scene a six plus minute recreation of Bernstein leading the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2 at Ely Cathedral in 1973. (Yannick Nézet-Séguin was Cooper’s crucial conducting consultant.) The camera roams fluidly across the orchestra, choir, and soloists, the music overtaking his entire body and booming throughout this majestic edifice. Bernstein is passionate and rapturous with perspiration, this is the apex of his joy. The whole film is worth seeing in a theater before it begins streaming on Netflix on Dec. 20, but this lengthy, cathartic moment is one you’ll want to experience with the best possible picture and sound.

But we never really get to know him as a musician or a man; he is larger than life, a midcentury American cultural force whose personality transcended the rarefied air of the classical music world. Unfortunately, there’s something distancing about Bernstein, too. We can’t imagine him ever not being “on,” aware as he was of his own brilliance and increasing celebrity. We see glimpses of personal happiness with different men including Matt Bomer as a clarinetist ex-boyfriend who bids him a heartbreaking, tearful farewell on a Manhattan sidewalk but it’s always shadowed by what might have been left unrealized in the portrayal.

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