Maestro

dir: Bradley Cooper

2023

Well, hey! Did you want to watch a film directed by Bradley Cooper? Starring Bradley Cooper? Playing a real life person-type person? That isn’t A Star is Born?

Were you desperately curious to learn about the life and times of Leonard Bernstein? THE Leonard Bernstein? As played by Bradley Cooper?

With a big honking prosthetic nose? One so large and honking that it makes him nasally and sound nothing like Bernstein?

Oi, you. Respect the nose, no mocking, no more shenanigans and no more tomfoolery. That nose previously won Nicole Kidman an Academy Award in The Hours where she played renowned writer and river-enjoyer Virginia Woolf. That nose has won more awards than Paul Giamatti.

And clearly Mr Cooper was convinced that this production and that nose were going to win him the Oscar that he covets so much. We are months away from that vaunted awards night, but I am telling you now, Mr Cooper, you ain’t going to win. You have put all your eggs and your nose in the one basket, believing that playing a real person, and a beloved one at that (maybe 50 years ago), would clinch it for you.

But there’s no way you are going to beat Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. That is a biopic. That has long stretches of black and white too, and it’s three hours long, meaning it’s very important. Your film, on the other hand, is only two hours and ten minutes long, therefore it’s not anywhere near as important.

Sadly, it’s not going to cut it. Also, this isn’t that solid a film. There are long stretches put up on the screen here where I really questioned why these scenes were the ones they decided to replicate or dramatise from his life.

They want to give us a solid underpinning to the flick, by taking time to develop the relationship between Bernstein and his eventual life partner / wife Felecia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), so there’s plenty of that, and that’s okay. However great Cooper thinks he is in the role, Carey Mulligan is that much better in these early scenes, whipping through quippy dialogue like she’s Katherine Hepburn in a 1940s screwball comedy.

As charming as these early scenes are, the role is one where she’s relegated to watching Bernstein adoringly from the sidelines, and little more. The relationship that the film is at pains to depict in all its complicated glory is a sadly superficial one. They do give her a confidante in the form of Lenny’s sister Shirley (Sarah Silverman), so at least she has someone to say obvious things to.

Bernstein comes across as a larger than life figure, someone bigger than everyone else who attacked his music, who attacked the world of orchestras and symphonies with not only gusto but an unstoppable lust for life. Other people in the film keep saying that Bernstein could one day be the first true American composer and conductor, and we’re meant to think that it must be true, that one day it will be true, and that it matters.

Honestly, though, for those of us who aren’t fresh out of the conservatory or who don’t have annual memberships to the opera or the local orchestra (which is 99.9 per cent of us), do any of us really understand why there are even conductors? Don’t most of us get the feeling that the conductor is taking the piss, and that the actual musicians know what tempo and such they’re meant to be playing at, and that they’re just humouring this weirdo at the front waving around those chopsticks?

The central conceit of the entire endeavour is that the flick, and Bernstein, don’t bother to hide his sexuality, but it leads to complications in his home life, yet never impacts on his life professionally. The image of the happy family gives him cover to do whatever the fuck he wants, and it’s all hunky dory for him every day of the week and twice on Sundays. But Felecia… She is sad… and angry.

She alternates between turning a blind eye, turning away in disgust and raging at him for his wicked ways, and him (not really apologising) responding along the lines of “you knew what the fuck you were getting in to”, which is somewhat unsatisfying, both for her and for us.

If he has difficulties professionally, in terms of creating or conducting great music, it’s usually paired with a time where he’s not having hot gay sex with hot young(er) gay men. Sadness takes the place of inspiration. Ennui displaces energy. But then he gets the greenlight from Felecia, hooks up with some sweet young twink, and then bangs out a new musical or opera, bam!

Is that… is that really how it went?

And what’s Felecia got? Nothing, nothing but longing, loneliness and regret. Oh, and three kids to look after (with the help of multiple maids, nannies etc) Lenny would, if he could, pretty much fuck everyone, and the world all looks on either lovingly or lustily, and Felecia, what does she really have going on?

I guess we see some triumphs for Mr Bernstein, him either composing and finishing particular pieces or getting to conduct particular symphonies, mostly Mahler, to grateful audiences, and Cooper physically overacts the fuck out of these scenes, making the way Bernstein conducted looking like a cross between a man wrestling an invisible bear and someone overcome with the Holy Spirit having seizures and talking in tongues.

It’s fun for him I guess. I haven’t seen every instance of Leonard Bernstein conducting, and I am the first to admit I don’t know anything about conducting beyond having watched last year’s Tár, which even has a scene where Cate Blanchett’s character watches old VHS tapes of Bernstein conducting to console herself once she’s in society’s bad books, and a documentary I recently watched about Australia’s Own Simone Young, who’s an internationally renowned conductor. I understand that they do way more than just wave a chopstick / baton around. They have to have the deepest knowledge of what they’re doing in music, and music history and that’s all great.

Even me, a complete ignoramus, can tell that Cooper is doing way too much All Of The Time, because this is soooo important. Usually it’s called overacting, but I guess we pay them to be dramatic and vivid, and not dull and accurate, in order to be entertained.

I didn’t really buy it, but it’s still an interesting performance. Cooper excels at making Bernstein seem like a guy who wasn’t just burning the candle at both ends, but was spit roasting it just to make sure. And however much he wants to match the witty, soulful elements of the man, he somewhat falls short. He especially doesn’t really look like Bernstein much of the time, predominately as the younger man, but the burden of years (not to mention excellent costuming and cosmetic / prosthetic work) gives a more believable combination down the track. The prosthetic nose is less distracting when the rest of him catches up.

There’s one moment towards the end of the film that made me gag with its idiocy – the aged Bernstein powering across a lawn in his convertible as R.E.M’s End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) only because it includes a lyric that literally has Michael Stipe yelling “Leonard Bernstein!”

Ugh, you shmucks. This whole flick feels like apple-shining, grade-grubbing, prestige-pandering awards bait, even with quality people involved, even with everyone trying their very best…

Rarely do I watch a biopic and think the person it’s about is poorly served by a film that squandered $80 million in its production, where the superficial elements work fine, but the real essence of what made the person so important or great is a surface barely scratched.

7 times the conversation with the daughter played by Maya Hawke is one of the cringiest things I’ve ever seen out of 10

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“Can I tell you a secret? Do you know I slept with both of your parents?” – that’s not something to brag about to a baby - Maestro