Review - Maestro
Directed by: Bradley Cooper
Written by: Bradley Cooper, Josh Singer
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bradley Cooper
Running Time: 129 minutes
Rating: 4/5
Maestro has been a long gestating project that has enticed the likes of Spielberg and Scorsese. Bradley Cooper was initially brought on to star, by Spielberg, who decided that he should direct the movie after watching a rough cut of ‘A Star is Born’.
The film follows the life and times of Leonard Bernstien, from his rise to prominence in the classic music scene of the 40s. While being primarily focused on his life and marriage with Felicia Montealegre, played by Carry Mulligan. The film is titled Meastro, it is without a doubt a two hander with Mulligan carrying large portions of this movie on her own.
I found this to be a big leap forward visually and dramatically for Cooper. The subject and execution is kind of a prefect fit for him. Being the, ahem, conductor of the whole project, both in front of and behind the camera. Cooper has always found his groove to be highly functioning and intense vanguards in whatever world his characters operate in. ‘Maestro’ he is seen as both the magnetic and energetic fulcrum of his family and the high class world of classical music.
We are as audiences very primed for biopics of this nature, the energetic upstart shakes up the artistic world they want to break into, while meeting the love of their life, and follow historic event after event that builds towards something iconic and having the info dump flow of a Wikipedia article.
The thing I appreciated in Maestro is that, we aren’t inundated with information and historical cameos left and right. Its focus is primarily about Leonard and Felicia’s relationship. Not so much about Leonard’s attempts for fame and fortune. It for sure has many moments of him building his fame, and iconography, name dropping his more famous accolades and conquest here and there.
But the focus of the film is much more interested in how Felicia wrestled with, and accepted all of Leonard’s flaws. Encouraging him to be himself, rather than suppress and hide it from the world.
This film is also stylistically very different than ‘A Star is Born’ which favored handheld and rock documentary realism. Maestro is a throwback to big beautiful Hollywood musical epics of the 40s and 50s, but with the vim and vigor of modern day filmmaking.
In the end I think this is a great pairing for Cooper, but it wont work for everyone. It fully commits to the personality of its subject, which is a boisterous enigmatic figure, who needed to be the center of attention at all times. It wears it sentimentality on its sleeve, and is willing to be over the top when it wants to. But is also able to reel it back in for quiet family melodrama. It’s hard not to be swept up by the passion of Lenny. But its earnestness will be a turn off for some.
