Despite the centrifugal force of its two central performances recreating the loving bond between the Bernsteins, Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro (2023) offers little more than something akin to a prolonged high-end fashion mag photoshoot, with a perfunctory script included — until its very end, when it decides to become an actual biopic of Leonard Bernstein, the celebrated American conductor and composer, yet far too late to make amends for the glossy tedium of the entire proceedings.
Shot both in black-and-white — and in lush colour, its past/present distinction quite straight-forward, we follow the career of the famed New York musician, performed also by Cooper, as if we were given a sneak-peek into the lives of the talented, rich and famous through a teaser trailer. While we are being allowed to witness moments of sweet (and brief) intimacy between Bernstein and his soon-to-be beloved spouse, Felicia Montealegre Cohn, played quite movingly by Carey Mulligan — that’s pretty much all the audience gets in terms of understanding their characters. Just enough to feel the texture of a life, but not enough as to be included in the actual dynamics of it.
Born in Costa Rica, raised in Chile, her mother Costa Rican aristocrat, her father an American-Jewish mining executive, Felicia Montealegre Cohn Berstein was a fierce intellectual, a social activist, and highly progressive in her own views, but little of that is seen in Maestro, except as wallpaper.
Instead, we are being served what looks like a highlights reel of the composer’s life, starting with intimate scenes with his lover, clarinetist David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer), and then handed a cinema version of emotional crumbing, with tiny bits of authentic interior lives thrown in between Lenny Bernstein’s endless frolicking from one performance, lecture, rehearsal, to the next — a string of ever younger (male) lovers in his wake — while his sophisticated, understanding wife, refusing to be thought of as victim in the transaction, builds an acting career in theatre and television, forever exchanging pleasantries with crew and cast. Even their three children (Alexa Swinton, Maya Hawke, Sam Nivola) appear as mere props for the power couple — as if hastily sketched-through via scattered bits of dialogue, given little more direction than to be youthful, upscale and a bit difficult. As teenagers are known to be.
Other than the brief, witty turn of comedian Sarah Silverman as Bernstein’s sister, in truth, I cannot even recall a fully drawn supporting character in the entire film.
Faces seem to replace one another, possibly the way they did in Lenny Bernstein’s hedonist, elevated and celebrated existence, which, as he confides to his concerned eldest daughter Jamie (Hawke), many were envious of (hence the rumours) — allowing at least for a hint of that particular sorrow of having to live a closeted life, unknown to even to the ones dearest to us.
It’s a pity that Maestro gives so little, while expecting equally little of the audience, painting a portrait of two truly fascinating people in the broadest brush-strokes possible — without a sense of irony in how it too ends up depicting complex people like the Bernsteins as two-dimensional — as fame and the public’s gaze often flatten out the most vivid of characters.
The Bernsteins have been subjects of scrutiny of their glamorous life, most famously in Tom Wolfe’s New York magazine cover story “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s”, which Mrs. Bernstein had a particular problem with — as she saw it as offensive, trivilising her humanitarian work.
Maestro’s only saving grace is its aforementioned third act, and Mulligan’s heartbreaking turn, in which we witness true drama when Felicia receives her cancer diagnosis, and the Bersteins’ charmed life is overtaken by that great equaliser — mortality, and all its emotional consequences. Finally, we are allowed a sense of shared humanity with the family, and at that point we are watching what seems to be an entirely different, committed piece of filmmaking.
Along with its episodic feel and the imbalance between its beginning, middle, and end, we are offered Bernstein’s timeless music, but with a strangely uneven sound (I had to turn down the volume when the lavish scores hit the screen), all of which must have been done on purpose, making Maestro a truly discombobulating experience — a cocktail mix of the brilliant and the banal.
★★✩✩✩
Author: ©Milana Vujkov
Lola On Film 
One response to “Maestro”
As always, your review was by far the most enjoyable to read! What’s more, it pinned down for me why (I think) I hadn’t watched it yet, despite the fact that it got a positive series of reviews overall. I think I kept having the sense that it wasn’t going to offer enough, when the subjects would seem to beg for so much.