“A bit garish.” So says Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) about a tie that Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) considers wearing, early on in their courtship in Maestro. The same could be said of this biopic, starting with the fact that Cooper also directed the film and co-wrote the script with Josh Singer. I’m all for artists taking big, bold swings—and I like the Cooper-directed A Star is Born well enough (though it did have Lady Gaga as a crucial buffer)—but this swing is off-puttingly insistent, from Cooper’s perfectly modulated Bernstein impression to the extreme close-ups he lavishes on himself to the operatic camera movements and showy scene transitions. As for how the film approaches its subject matter—the preeminent American conductor who also composed the music for the likes of West Side Story, Candide, and On the Waterfront—Maestro indulges in deconstruction nearly to the point of demonization. While nodding to Bernstein’s incredible talent, the film mostly traces the rocky open marriage he shared with Montealegre, an actress, which wore on her as Bernstein became increasingly indiscriminate in his dalliances with men. (He looks nothing less than monstrous in a shot of him sweaty and bleary under red strobe lights while dancing at a club with a younger student.) Maestro does manage an incredibly moving later section depicting Bernstein’s response to Felicia’s struggle with cancer (though much of these scenes owe their power to Mulligan), yet I ultimately came away feeling that the movie was more interested in Cooper as an artist than Bernstein.
(12/28/2023)
