Maestro

Maestro

15 minutes into the movie I was wondering what was the point of this movie? It is not even your regular wikipedia to screen Oscar bait biopic. It is bombarded with dialogue and most of them add nothing to do the plot (if there was one). The prosthetics and over acting performances from Bradley and Carey were so painful and cringe inducing to watch. A movie with a stellar cast and technicians yet the output is something so painfully bad. Could someone tell Bradley he doesn't need to explain everything and can actually show us what's happening. The entire 120 minutes felt more like a podcast with annoying fake accents rather than a feature film. Leonard Bernstein is regarded as a genius and one of the greatest composers to exist but this movie was nothing about it. It was a dull unemotional Marriage Story where people keep talking and talking about the most mundane aspects of life. The use of music is comically bad, for a movie about a composer, not a single piece of music sticks with you. Bradley uses the most original idea to drift between timelines - B&W for past and color for original (The creativity!). Club this along with Theory of Everything, Eyes of Tammy Faye, Judy, Bohemian Rhapsody, The King's Speech, and The Darkest Hour in "Please Give me an Oscar, I am doing acting with 10 KGs of prosthetics on my face and faking a foreign accent" sub-genre.

Yes, good acting, great music but absolutely no story. At all. Apart from his bisexuality which dominated the script. Bradley Cooper was too greedy in writing, directing and starring. What did he write? Not much of a story. I'd like to have seen Lenny's childhood explicated, more meat on the bare bones offered here. Also, why so little on West Side Story - one brief extract and not the huge explosive hit it was at the time. The adulation which followed. The teasing bits of his Missa were beautiful and far too much of his Mahler, though lovely, had little bearing on the overall story. Brad's prosthetic nose was distracting in that it gave a nasal whiny tone to his dialogue. And he might have done better with another actor. Carey Mulligan, as always was amazing in her role but again, underplayed the distress she must have felt at his infidelity/. At one point he left her for a young (male) lover and only returned when she was diagnosed with cancer. (in her breast, from a broken heart? Who knows) The great man of music was not served well here, far too shallow a treatment of his genius. 5/10.

The acting is superb and particularly Carey Mulligan who is astonishing, as usual, and Bradley Cooper's transformation is incredible. The look and feel throughout is very polished. But, and this isn't a minor quibble -- I found it really hard to understand the dialogue! Characters speak so quickly, in a mumble, that I actually considered putting on subtitles. Anyway, it wouldn't have made a difference, I thought the movie was so empty and plotless and uninteresting. There was really no tension in the wife's dealing with her husband's bisexuality, no real exploration or understanding of Bernstein's conflicts, and no delving into his achievements or their context, so there wasn't much left!

The only complexity of this "love story" lies in the fact that Bernstein cheated on his wife with men, which somehow should make it "better" (more sophisticated, poignant, forgivable?) than the ordinary, sleazy kind of cheating other husbands practice with the opposite sex. Apart from the fact that Bernstein's bisexuality seems to be the only reason why this biopic was made, the movie never takes off. I usually like Cooper but here he overacts, with a perpetual scary crazy stare and I won't even go on about that nose which is a huge distraction (literally). Mulligan is good, but kind of mousy. The movie starts in color, then continues in B&W, jumping from scene to scene in a disjointed way, none of them engaging. Then halfway in it jumps back to color (why? Don't know or care) and to lots of banal dialogue, some music, some crisis, always flat. I don't even like the bombastic musicals of the 50s or Bernstein's classical music, so even the score was kind of annoying to me. If you'd like to watch a great biopic about a gay/bisexual musician, I'd recommend De-Lovely, about Cole Porter. Excellent movie and fabulous music, too.

Considering the hype around the film and interviews with Bradley Cooper and other actors praising Maestro I was expecting something original. However, I got the same narrative which we have seen and heard atleast a thousand times, a genius man, loving wife and cheating husband she tolerates because he is a genius. On top of the formulaic storyline, the pretentious aspect ratio 1.33:1 to make it more artsy felt nauseatingly forced. This aspect ratio I watched first time in Xavier Dolan French Canadian brilliant "Mommy" as the only time screens widens during his happy memories with his mother but otherwise with this aspect ratio it gave this trapped claustrophobic feeling as a viewer. Same for the Lighthouse, it worked as both men feel trapped on an isolated island. Here and Saltburn ( A knock-off of Talented Mr. Ripley for Gen-Z), I don't understand the need; except that they're trying soooo hard to get that Oscar noms for something. The only saving grace was Carey Mulligan. She deserves all the accolades. If this wins any Oscars it must be due to producer Steven Spielberg's hard campaign because this was unbearable. There is a whole argument between Bradley & Carey, where the camera was left behind the fences. Let that sink in, how badly Bradley wants that Oscar.

It's a biopic set in New York City between 1943 and the late 1980s. Its primary focus is the relationship and marriage between Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). We learn pretty early that Bernstein's sexual appetites extend to both women and men. An early male relationship is with David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer). Felicia knows Bernstein's orientation from the beginning but asks that he be discrete. We also meet Bernstein's sister, Shirley (Sarah Silverman), and, especially, he and Felicia's oldest daughter, Jamie (Maya Hawke). The second orientation of "Maestro" is Bernstein's difficulty harnessing his expansive skills in composition, conducting, and popular education about music. His extroversion sometimes hinders his ability to focus. The film portrays this issue less effectively. "Maestro" is an intense and skillfully photographed movie. The cinematography reflects the era being portrayed. Thus, for example, the film is black and white until the 1960s. I cannot comment on the portrayals of Bernstein's conducting or the quality of his compositions, except to note that Bernstein's conducting is very intense. An enormous number of people populate the film, making it difficult to keep track from time to time. That said, Carey Mulligan gives a superb performance that deserves Academy consideration, though some parts of her life are missing, such as her political activism. Cooper's Bernstein is not deep outside the relationship with Felicia that slowly deteriorates. The film omits to mention that Bernstein also had affairs with women during the marriage. The movie portrays Felicia's final illness with breast cancer very effectively and emotionally. .

A struggling musician agonized by his own genius, talents, and creativity and trapped in loveless marriage filled with guilt. Both look the other way while one has an affair and realize the importance of one's own partner too late. Right now, at the top of my head I can think of 'Fosse/Verdon', 'A Star Is Born', 'George & Tammy', 'Walk the Line', 'Dreamgirls', 'Daisy Jones & The Six', and etc. (Wow, that's a lot.) Biographical genre is especially tricky because it has to excel the life of actual historical figures. 'Maestro' could have been so much better if it delved into the introspective and artistic side of Bernstein deeper or provided a different and fresh point of view on his life rather than reciting his personal life. His autobiography or research would be more fun and interesting than this explanatory movie. There were a few futile attempts to make the movie look more artistic, abstract, and ambiguous. They failed because they serve no purpose but to look pretentious. White and black, camera movement, the use of light and shadows, and musical aspects. They are all good attempts, but for what? By doing so, is the story getting stronger? Do they enhance what viewers feel? Waste of time and films. Bradley Cooper's performance is disappointing. He never acts; he imitates. When he's on the screen, we know clearly that he's acting. It's hard to be absorbed and immersed into the screen because he always pushes the audience away with his trying too hard. I get that he wants to emulate Bernstein's twangy voice. However, emotions and messages he delivers are more important than his likeness of Bernstein's tone, accent, sound, or mannerism. He focuses on what's outside of Bernstein rather than what would be inside of him. There is a 10 minute sequence of Cooper conducting, and it's screaming 'Look how good I am!!!'. It's one of the highest points for emotions to burst out for the audience, and I started to laugh.

There aren't many films out there that feature the classical music world or figures as their subject matter. Tar of course comes to mind, which imo was a masterpiece, though it was initially a bit slow to engage this viewer. Amadeus is another one. Anyway, I came into this one hoping it would be a welcome addition to a very short list. What I was not expecting was this collosal, stupyfingly disappointing shell of a movie. Rather than try to tell coherent story or reveal some information about a somewhat overlooked but important figure, the creator behind this dismal effort--and that would be Bradley Cooper himself--decided to give us a turgid arrangement of seemingly random, uninteresting scenes that ultimately had nothing of interest to say about the character portrayed. Sure, it had the veneer of being technically polished, with lots of aging makeup in play and actors--Bradly especially--amping up their performances to Oscar-worthy levels. But there was no story, and even worse, no sense of engagement with the primary characters. It's like the camera set ups were deliberately planned to make the actors seem as remote and off kilter as possible. The events were random, the dialogue empty, banal and uninformative, the accompanying music frequently distracting. Overall, it was just such a "look at me, act, direct and write" vanity piece for Bradley Cooper that said far more about him, and his outsized ego, than it did about the long deceased and sadly overlooked subject that the film purports to be about. To sum up, Maestro is a textbook example of style over substance, vanity over generosity, pretentiousness over authenticity, cinematic form over narrative function. Avoid this film, and watch (or rewatch) Tar instead--or even that old chestnut, "Amadeus". (which as much as I didn't like it at the time , is a restrained masterpiece compared to this folly of a film.)

Bradley does a convincing facial transformation with make up and nose piece to look enough like Bernstein. Unfortunately every other aspect of the movie is lacking. First of all didn't like the direction. Strange camera angles. Unnecessary black and white cinematography. Also the mumbling dialogue and affected way the leads spoke. I know they were artists but no one talks like that. The main problem was the screenplay turned out like most biopics focussed on the wrong things. It does show him conducting but does not show him creating and glosses over his most famous work West Side Story. Instead the focus is on his marriage. Carey Mulligan is good at looking sad as usual. Sure she wasn't happy in the end he was having affairs with men but is this movie supposed to be about Leonard Bernstein's marriage? Not interesting aspect of his life. In this way it was even worse than the Cole Porter biopic with Kevin Kline. Too much about the relationship problems. In a biopic it's better to do it the old fashioned Hollywood way like in the 50s and 60s. Don't concentrate on the love life and focus on the man and his achievements and his legacy. But that's the problem with modern biopics. Too bad this could not have been an exception. Bradley should just have acted and not tried to direct and write the screenplay.