The actor-director’s latest offering is an engaging, rather unconventional biopic on Netflix. But does it offer the goods?
Biographical drama films about musicians and composers can be either hit or miss. While some biopics like Ray, Walk The Line, Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman, and Elvis did very well, those were technically films centered on popular musicians and not about composers. Doing a movie about classical composers can be risky because the younger audiences might not be as familiar with their works.
However, there are some examples of films about composers that proved to be very successful. Based on a stage play inspired by the life of Wolfgang Mozart, Amadeus was the 1984 Academy Award winner of Best Picture, and it brought a newfound appreciation of classical music from new generations. Ten years later, Gary Oldman portrayed Ludwig Van Beethoven in a biopic titled Immortal Beloved. Yet the idea of modern music hasn’t been given much exploration.
Maestro is the latest work from actor-director Bradley Cooper, who co-wrote the script with Josh Singer. Based on the life of Leonard Bernstein, the Netflix film covers nearly 45 years of the composer’s prolific career and turbulent personal life. This is Cooper’s second outing as a director after the success of 2018’s musical drama A Star Is Born. However, can the filmmaker succeed in delivering the goods?
The film opens in the late 1980s as an elderly Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) is giving a television interview. Hunched over his piano, he plunks out the notes while reminiscing about the past. Flashing back to 1943, we meet the twenty-five-year-old Bernstein when he was an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. After his boss falls ill, Lenny steps in to conduct a live performance on short notice, and it leads to positive notices from the critics. His career as a conductor and composer is on the rise, but Lenny is still hungry for more. During this time, he is shown in a relationship with his boyfriend David (Matt Bomer) while collaborating with a friend Jerome Robbins (Michael Urie), who is a rising director-choreographer on Broadway.
At a house party, Lenny meets a young woman named Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). He is intrigued by her beauty, and Felicia finds herself smitten with Lenny’s amiable, quirky nature. Both engage in playful, witty banter while discussing their backgrounds and education. Lenny is revealed to come from a prominent Jewish family in Massachusetts and resisted following in his father’s footsteps as a businessman. Felicia has been working for the last few years in New York as a stage actress. Lenny feels that, to create better music, he needs to have enough passion to fuel his work. He sees Felicia as thus being his artistic muse and creative inspiration. Meanwhile, Felicia comes to learn that Lenny is attracted to both men and women, but she resolves not to let it become an issue in their lives. She decides to stay with him on the provision that he not embarrass her. However, this means that Lenny will have to break up with David, who is left deeply hurt by the abrupt end of their relationship. Lenny and Felicia get married shortly afterward.
Over the next several years, Lenny and Felicia raised three children (two daughters and one son) in a loving, supportive household. Although the film does not explore the 1950s in-depth, Lenny’s prolific work has substantially grown beyond the world of conducting. He has written original scores for hit feature films like On The Waterfront and successful Broadway musicals like Candide and West Side Story. Lenny has also continued to create original works of classical music and stage concerts. In addition, he’s become devoted to social justice causes and charities. All the while, he finds time to work as a teacher and mentor to young musicians and composers. Meanwhile, Felicia has more or less put her career on hold to take care of their kids. The notion of a life centered around her husband has begun to take its toll.
As Lenny’s career continues to soar, he finds himself struggling personally. His alcoholism and substance abuse are starting to affect his composing, and he’s finding it hard to come up with new music. In addition, he is becoming “sloppy” and not discreet in keeping his affairs with other men hidden. Eldest daughter Jamie (Maya Hawke) becomes aware of talk regarding her father’s infidelities, leading to an uncomfortable conversation about whether or not the gossip is true. Lenny attempts to assuage her by dismissing the rumours as mere jealousies from rivals who dislike him, but she is left uncertain by this explanation.
Following an unpleasant scene when Lenny brings his latest boy toy (Gideon Glick) to a party, the couple have a tense argument about how their relationship has come to such a state. Felicia has to decide for herself regarding their marriage, and the couple ends up separating as a result. Despite the difficult nature of the split, Lenny and Felicia remain legally married and are determined to do right by their children. One question remains: can they function as a family despite their changing circumstances? And what will happen if they stay apart?
Cooper does an excellent job as Lenny Bernstein. At 48, he has come a long way as a dramatic actor. Thanks to makeup and camera tricks, the film’s early scenes are able to depict Cooper twenty years younger than his real age and make him look twenty years older. During the latter portions of the film, extensive makeup effects turn Cooper into a man of middle age and later a senior citizen to a convincing degree. There has been controversy over the film’s use of Cooper, who is not Jewish, wearing a prosthetic nose, but this is not anti-Semitic or offensive. Furthermore, the real-life Bernstein had more than a passing resemblance to Cooper as a younger man. Mulligan gives a captivating performance as Felicia. Rather than the stereotypical cuckolded wife, her character understands and supports her husband while struggling with being a housewife. Her finest scene comes in a heated debate between Felicia and Lenny, in which the former warns her husband that he will die old and lonely if he doesn’t change his ways.
The supporting cast delivers solid performances. Matt Bomer is sympathetic and likable as David, and it is sad to see him heartbroken as Lenny breaks things off to move on to a relationship with Felicia. Michael Urie is compelling as the talented, strong-willed yet temperamental Jerome Robbins, and his interactions with Lenny foreshadow the tempestuous collaboration the two would have on West Side Story. Maya Hawke of Stranger Things fame brings a quiet, troubled nature to Jamie Bernstein as she watches her parents’ increasingly fraught marriage crumble.
Unlike other movies about LGBTQIA+ persons, Maestro succeeds in depicting the complexity of Lenny’s personal life with sensitivity and grace. In past years, films would either downplay or eliminate LGBTQ+ individuals’ struggles, and other movies would play up the sexuality angle in an almost over-the-top manner. Five years ago, the Bohemian Rhapsody film gained criticism for a scene where Freddie Mercury comes out as bisexual to his female love interest Mary Austin, who dismisses the idea of her lover being bisexual with the comment “You’re gay.” Maestro luckily does not make that same mistake, because Lenny is shown to have feelings for both Felicia and his male lovers. What’s more, Bernstein’s three children have supported Cooper’s film and acknowledged that the real Lenny was indeed bisexual.
Cinematographer Matthew Libatique presents the film in quite an impressive way. The early sequences set in the 1940s are filmed in black-and-white, to invoke the period setting of Lenny’s early work at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Upon moving into the 1950s and 1960s, the film switches over to colour at the height of the Bernstein’s marriage.
The film’s soundtrack is quite extensive. Cooper has selected many tracks that Bernstein recorded throughout his life. Among these selections include Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 “Resurrection”, Bernstein’s opera Trouble in Tahiti, and songs from his musical Candide. Sadly, there are few songs from Bernstein’s Broadway career and West Side Story is only given a passing mention with the “Prologue” being performed. It would have been interesting for the film to include Lenny collaborating with Robbins and the young Steven Sondheim on West Side Story, but that would better be served in its own story.
Overall, Maestro is a great movie. Cooper continues to shine as an actor and a filmmaker. Mulligan delivers a strong, fiery performance. Five out of five stars.