Bradley Cooper, Cary Mulligan
“MAESTRO” My rating: A (Netflix)
129 minutes | MPAA ratingL R
Here it is, folks. The year’s best film.
From the very first frame of “Maestro” we know that we’re in good hands.
Some movies are like that. They flow effortlessly, leading us into their visual and aural landscape. They know what they’re about. They have their own personalities.
Bradley Cooper’s film (he directed, co-wrote and stars in it) centers on the relationship of real-life composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein and his actress wife, Felicia Montealegre.
It was not your conventional marriage. Lenny (Cooper) was unapologetically bisexual. Five minutes into the film we see him waking up in bed with another man. At one point he addresses the new baby of friends, asking “Do you know that I slept with both your parents?”
But Felicia (Carey Mulligan), exhibiting a way-ahead-of-the-curve tolerance, buys into their partnership knowing the score. In her book, love is tolerant to a fault.
Here’s what I relish about “Maestro”: You can feel yourself falling in love as these two characters do. Their repartee is amusing, seductive, astonishingly honest. You want to be part of it.
And like Lenny and Felicia we’re so smitten that we don’t think about how difficult it will be to maintain a mutually satisfying equilibrium.
The acting? Holy crap it’s good.
Bradley Cooper
Cooper, with a bit of help from a prostethic nose, absolutely nails the Leonard Bernstein we recall. He’s got the vocal patterns perfect, and on the podium he exhibits the intense joy and bodily enthusiasm that made him the most identifiable conductor in the world.
But he’s just as effective as the private Lenny, a man who was about as matter-of-fact when it comes to sex as is humanly possible. The problem, of course, is that few of us are so hangup free.
Mulligan’s Felicia is his perfect match. She is utterly supportive of her husband and children, but as time goes on Lenny’s escapades start to wear. Mulligan has a few moments of transcendent fury.
Expect Oscar nominations for both.
For that matter, comedian Sarah Silverman is astonishingly good in the straight role of Bernstein’s sister.
Covering nearly 50 years of modern American cultural history, “Maestro” draws its musical score mostly from Bernstein’s compositions: “West Side Story,” “On the Waterfront,” “Candida,””Fancy Free,” not to mention samplings of various orchestral and choral works.
Yet it never becomes a “and-then-I-wrote…” musical biopic.
Lenny’s career is always there in the background, but its his relationship with Felicia (and later with his daughter Jamie, played by Maya Hawke) that provides the narrative and emotional spine.
Most of the film has been shot in gloriously rich black and white (Matthew Labatique is the cinematographer), with every frame meticulously composed for maximum effect. (Cooper reportedly has been working on the project for a decade; he has left little to chance, yet “Maestro” feels fresh and spontaneous.)
There are moments here that can leave a viewer in tears, both for our beautiful possibilities and for our inevitable shortcomings. In giving us the story of a great artist and his loved ones Bradley Cooper has tapped into the transcendent.
Can this really be only his second feature as director? There’s a sort of Orson-Welles-makes-“Citizen Kane” wonder and audacity at work here.
Let’s just give him an armload of Oscars and be done with it.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 