Five years after his debut hit “A Star is Born,” director and actor Bradley Cooper has released another music-related film, “Maestro.”
It should make for an extremely powerful and personal love story, and yet, despite being well-acted and well-made, “Maestro” ends up being just, well, okay.
In the music biopic about the iconic composer, and the fictional Lydia Tár’s “mentor,” Cooper deviates from other biopics like “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Ray,” which were so cliche that they made the genre parodied to death.
Instead, “Maestro” focuses less on a childhood-to-death story of Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and more on his relationship with actor Felicity Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), covering two periods of their lives and lifelong marriage. It even touches on Bernstein’s bisexuality and how that affects his wife and family.
The film makes sure to have an artistic edge, showing the early days of their career in black-and-white and the later part of their lives in color, all shot in a square 4×3 aspect ratio.
The filmmaking, while ambitious and sometimes visually striking, is strangely at odds with itself. Some moments have a grand, bombastic tone, where the camerawork includes these grand sweeping dolly and crane shots, like a musical number or a transition of a young Lenny running from his apartment to Carnegie Hall for his first gig. The problem is that these energetic and showy scenes are contained inside a small aspect ratio, never capturing the epic bravura they are obviously trying to express.
Other times the soundtrack does this, too. With all the music being works from Bernstein, some of the music is big and loud while others are melancholic and subtle. This leads to scenes working well with the music and others feeling unnecessary and a bit too much.
Did the opening ballet from “West Side Story” really need to play over Felicity suspecting that her husband is having an affair when the cinematography and acting already shows that?
Then there’s the elephant in the room, the reason why “Maestro” has been getting press: the nose. For the most part, Kazu Miro’s makeup on Bernstein and Montealegre is incredibly realistic, especially for when they’re older. The wrinkled skin and graying hair look authentic. But when the film covers the composer in his twenties, who is still played by an actor in his late 40s, the result is not pretty.
Because he has to be younger, the rubber-faced Cooper looks distracting and unnerving. Any time the film cuts to an extreme close-up of Cooper facing the camera, his prosthetic cheekbones, pointy chin and large nose fill up the screen—it is terrifying. Yes, the nose can be distracting, but it works better on an older Bernstein.
It is instead the casting that feels offensive. The main issue is the decision to cast a non-Jewish actor to play a real-life Jewish man and Carey Mulligan, a white, British woman, to play the Costa-rican Montealegre. And because of the inaccurate casting, the film’s pursuit for authenticity is sidetracked, instead becoming another star-studded vehicle made to win awards. Either that or a reference done in bad taste to the casting of “West Side Story.”
Despite the unethical casting, Cooper and Mulligan give it their all in their performances.
Mulligan is especially compelling in portraying Montealegre. She humanizes her, showing her pleasant nature as well as the exhaustion she feels towards Bernstein and his infidelity.
Cooper has a harder time playing the composer. When he’s young, Cooper has to act through a high-pitched northern accent and prosthetics, but he does a better job with the older version, using more of his natural tone in Bernstein’s rougher voice. He’s more performative compared to Mulligan, being flamboyant and forced as the composer, whether he’s conducting or talking with people.
At times he does have fun with the role, including getting to show Lenny snorting coke, dancing with younger men at a club with sweat dripping down his face, his over-the-top conducting or playing a man’s butt like a bongo drum.
When it comes to Cooper’s and Mulligan’s chemistry, it works well, but it also feels surface level. Most of the dialogue they have together is snarky flirting or talking about Bernstein’s importance. They never have a more personal conversation that makes their lifelong relationship feel fleshed out. Yet, there are some standout scenes that better show their connection, such as the couple running lines together in an empty theater. In many other scenes, their connection feels rehearsed. Honestly, whenever Leonard flirts with a male lover, it feels more passionate and real compared to how he acts to Felicity.
It’s in the second half, where the film takes a depressing turn, that better showcases their connection. The actors leave the honeymoon phase and act as an older, flawed couple. Cooper and Mulligan do great at expressing their characters’ frustrations and sadness, making up for the middling first half.
Even if all these elements don’t work out, there are times when they do and are spectacular. The concert scenes, including the famous concert of Bernstein conducting Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2” in Ely Cathedral, convey so much emotion, from the music, the acting and camerawork, which usually calms down at these parts and provide the most visually striking shots in the film, bringing that melancholy out naturally. There’s an argument scene between Montealegre and Bernstein that is done in one take, creating an isolated feel with the aspect ratio and distant camera angle while letting the two leads showcase the best acting in the movie.
These handful of scenes almost make up for how hit-and-miss “Maestro” can be. It is good-looking, ambitious and competent—the producing credits for Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese prove that—but it’s less than the sum of its parts.
The film is an experiment, mixing an artistic, personal romantic drama with an epic biopic of one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. It’s like a big Hollywood movie squeezing itself into an arthouse film, garnering a pleasant but hollow, surface-level result.
Compared to another recent movie about an LGBTQ+ conductor with personal issues, as okay as “Maestro” is, it can never be “Tár.”
“Maestro” is Rated R for some language and drug use. It’s in select theaters now and available on Netflix Dec. 20.
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