** out of ****
We find ourselves in that time of year where films in which studios have no faith are dumped on the American public. The reason is simple: they keep all the good stuff for December. If you want your film nominated for the Academy Awards, it must have a premiere before the end-of-the-year cutoff; therefore, the crappy movies come out around about this time. Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial effort, was given a limited release to qualify for the Oscars before it landed on Netflix and, while I had my reservations that a biopic of Leonard Bernstein could prove film worthy, I held out hopes it could deliver something worthwhile.
Cooper’s first film, A Star is Born, perhaps the nine hundredth version of that moldy tale, served one purpose—as a vehicle to allow Lady Gaga’s acting talent to shine on the big screen. Cooper has done much the same thing with Maestro, taking a backseat to let Carey Mulligan lead in the role of Bernstein’s long-suffering wife Felicia, forgetting to make a biopic of Lenny at all.
With a title like Maestro, one assumes, walking in, that a Lenny biopic is what you will get and, if you are, you will be saddened. Bernstein, though, as I hinted at, would be a hard lead subject in a film. In real life, he was a bit of a cypher, a bit of an enigma, a bit of genius, and a bit reckless in his personal and working lives. While he composed some beautiful music, he never really gave us the music he could have, given his over-numerous engagements as a sought-out lecturer, teacher, and, of course, as the finest American conductor of classical music to have ever lived.
Given how he conducted his own life, his story can be seen as an errant mess or the result of a genius who stretched himself too thin. For these reasons, perhaps it is inevitable that the film focuses on Felicia’s personal life while only giving snapshots of Bernstein’s career. This movie is not Maestro. It is Felicia, another in a long line of stories of wives coming to the realization that their husbands happen to be gay or perpetual cheaters or both. That is not to say such a venture couldn’t be satisfying drama, but if you’re going to put your eggs in that basket, one best dive in and make something of it. Instead, Maestro is kind of a half-breed between a biopic and a slice-of-life, by-the-numbers marriage drama.
The film begins in the Bohemian art world of the early-to-mid 1950s New York—crummy lofts, people engaging in ways of life that went against the grain of the time, etc. We see Bernstein being called, last minute, to conduct the New York Philharmonic due to the principal conductor being sick. This moment gave Bernstein a name and gave him a long career. From there, we see him seemingly revoke his obvious bisexuality in favor of a married life with Felicia, only to spend much of his married life trying to be what he really was and neglecting that bond.
The film goes to great lengths to show Lenny’s love for Felicia—especially in its prologue and in the later scenes where he remains by her side as she dies of cancer. It is a true story, and interesting in some ways, but it is not unique and the film does nothing in terms of offering us what it could have—a biopic of the caliber of Taylor Hackford’s Ray, that has narrative drive, seamless portrayals, and a real exploration of its subject. I didn’t know Bernstein before, I don’t know him now, and it’s clear Cooper didn’t know him either. So, with Maestro, he took the easy way out.
If I were to pretend Maestro is a biopic of Bernstein, it would be a strange one, even if Felicia were not a character in it. We see Bernstein composing music for Jerome Robbins’ ballet Fancy Free (which would be adapted as the musical On the Town). We see Bernstein conducting a choir singing “Make Our Garden Grow” from Candide, perhaps the most beautiful finale for a musical ever written. We see Bernstein finish and attend the premiere of his MASS: A Theatre Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, which was commissioned by Jackie Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center and represented the moment his compositions became too unwieldy and eclectic for anyone to control. We see him teaching conducting to young people.
It is as if Cooper has taken his cue from Miloš Forman’s Man on the Moon, another biopic that misses the mark by simply showing the “greatest hits” of Andy Kaufman’s career—lovingly reenacted by Jim Carrey, but to what end? Both these films suffer for that choice because, if we wanted to see Bernstein conducting Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection Symphony” at Ely Cathedral, we could do that very easily on Youtube. We would be getting the real thing and not a reenactment.
All these scenes of Bernstein’s career moments are perversely long, as are some ponderous shots of Bernstein’s monologuing while being interviewed by various reporters. I don’t blame cinematographer Matthew Libatique or editor Michelle Tesoro for these dreadful, plodding shots, but Cooper. Cooper’s acting talent so outshines his chops as a director that you wonder why he bothers getting behind the camera.
But you have to remember: actors are not stupid. They know the Academy is composed mostly of actors and actors-turned-directors (such as Robert Redford and Kevin Costner) tend to win Best Director (often on their first attempts) because another actor in the Academy will want to win it and be successful when they take up the directing reins. It’s a vicious cycle because often those films don’t hold up even five years after their release. In short, they win for the wrong reasons.
Cooper’s likeness and voice are so like Bernstein’s, you might think he’s using documentary footage. But I hesitate to say his Lenny never really comes to life. When Jaime Foxx (perhaps the most talented man in Hollywood) played Ray Charles, he was not impersonating or giving us a Saturday Night Live impression; he became the man in a respectful way that still showed warts and all. Cooper, through focusing on Felicia’s story (he co-wrote the film with Josh Singer) and taking the “greatest hits” route, undercuts his own performance. It is a brilliant likeness—a more-than-fine impression—but it’s not a fully-developed performance, something we expect from Cooper, even when he appears in stinkers.
Since the film is Mulligan’s, it would be perhaps best to review her performance. It is earnest and professional—she has the right transatlantic accent and grace—but it is not, on the whole, truly good. By devoting so much wasted time on Lenny’s activities, none of which reveal anything about the man we didn’t already know, Cooper lets Mulligan down. We keep coming back to her as she gets more and more depressed, only to watch her die in great pain and the film ends with what we might think of as Lenny’s memory of her, young and in full bloom in 1950s Manhattan. But it is ultimately a thankless part—no more or less good than something that could be shown on basic cable. It was a painful marriage for the actual woman, to be sure, but bitterness is its only flavor. What we have here are two people who never really knew each other.
So, what are we left with? Scenes of an unwieldy genius engaging with what was, perhaps, his only true love (music). Scenes of domestic disturbance and a wife waking up to realization upon realization. And, in between, scenes that move the plot nowhere. It is a great missed opportunity. Bernstein’s life was his music—and the film makes this clear except we get only brief cameos of people very important in his musical development.
The film is shot partly in black and white and partly in color. It is as if Cooper has distilled into one project all the elements that tend to make award-voters giddy. But, like American Hustle (another Cooper vehicle), it is a film only a critic could love—one that is so enraptured with award-winning fads that they forget to take a closer look to see what is there. What is there is not nothing—there are individual moments that are interesting—it is only what is not there that is heartbreaking. Was this a grand design? Was I meant to feel this way walking out of the movie, with all its ambiguity and silence? If so, I don’t appreciate it.
Steven Spielberg was one of the producers of the film. One gleans from this that he fell in love with Bernstein while directing his equally lopsided version of West Side Story and wished to share more of Bernstein with the world. If only he and Cooper had, there might have been something more than a domestic tragedy in the lives of the rich and famous.
If Maestro wins Oscars, and I doubt it will, it will be for the wrong reasons. It will be some vindication for a star’s effort, or a sympathy vote for Mulligan’s character, or simply for some of the technical virtuosity in its makeup design. A better title would have been Fragments and fragments of a life seldom make a great movie experience. In this case, it would be better to watch a lecture of Bernstein’s or listen to some of his music or, frankly, almost anything else. Which makes the film, in the end, dispensable. Bernstein didn’t deserve that. Cooper doesn’t. Mulligan doesn’t. One only hopes Cooper could try directing other actors in his next picture to see if he has anything more to offer than tired plots with some fancy photography.
Maestro
Directed by Bradley Cooper
Screenplay by Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer
Produced by Fred Berner, Bradley Cooper, Amy Durning, Kristie Macosko Krieger, Martin Scorcese, and Steven Spielberg
Music by Leonard Bernstein
Cinematography by Matthew Libatique
Editing by Michelle Tesoro
Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre
Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein
Sarah Silverstein as Shirley Bernstein
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