Maestro: Not Much Going on Beneath the Pretty Surface of Cooper's Bernstein Pic

By Liz Braun

Rating: B-minus

review by Liz Braun

What you learn from Maestro is that Bradley Cooperis a surprisingly skilled filmmaker. 

This biopic of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein presents Bernstein as a brilliant but conflicted artist and semi-closeted gay man devoted to his wife and children. 

Cooper, who co-wrote and directs, stars as Bernstein. Carey Mulligan co-stars as Felicia Montealegre, Bernstein’s wife. This is a big, juicy production, the sort of film that inspires conversation about hair and makeup, prosthetics, lighting, costumes and cinematography.

Bradley Cooper as conductor Leonard Bernstein in Maestro

For this viewer, the movie felt stagey and entirely devoid of emotion, You never forget you’re watching a film — a beautifully made film, but still.

Maestro begins and ends with crucial references to Felicia Montealegre.

It opens with an older Bernstein in an interview, talking about how much he misses his late wife. 

The movie then jumps back in time (at which time it is in black and white) and introduces Bernstein’s early life and career. Here’s a young Bernstein in bed with another man, just so we’re clear about that, and here is his big, albeit accidental debut — filling in at the last minute to conduct the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall when a guest conductor gets sick. Bernstein was an immediate sensation.

(Why? Dunno. The transformative experience of seeing Bernstein fully at work comes much later in the movie in a meticulous recreation of the legendary 1973 LSO performance of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral. The movie is a bit stingy with performance, which is odd, given the subject matter.)

The story speeds through events in a linear fashion, with people chatting in snappy ‘40s movie style to fill in some of the details; the first hour is like falling into a TCM marathon.  

Bernstein meets Felicia, who is an actress. They begin a little dance of flirtation; she makes it clear she understands his orientation and everything else about him.  They get married. Initially their fortunes rise together. They have children. 

The film is in colour as their lives expand and his career takes off in the 1950s and ‘60s … even as her main occupation becomes supportive wife and mother. 

There’s a lot of talk and some arresting moments — when they run into one of Bernstein’s former lovers (played by Matt Bomer), for example — but no clear picture of Bernstein ever emerges. 

The storytelling plays with time. There are some inspired cinematic moments here, when real life melts into performance and “all the world’s a stage” becomes literal, but there is also a self-consciousness about the filmmaking that keeps a viewer at arm’s length. Maybe that’s the point, as the disconnect kind of mirrors Bernstein’s own private-public struggle. 

Or maybe not.

Maestro is meticulously crafted but dull overall.

Maestro: directed by Bradley Cooper, written by Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer; starring Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer. Film is in theatres in Toronto and Vancouver Dec 1, and in theatres in Montreal, Calgary, Charlottetown, Victoria, Hamilton, Waterloo, Whitby, Guelph, London, Kingston, Windsor and Ottawa on Dec. 8. 

Maestro streams on Netflix December 20.