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Maestro Movie Review

Maestro is a 2023 biographical drama film directed by Bradley Cooper and starring himself opposite Carey Mulligan. It is a very well made, but rather flawed biopic.

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“If you’re not careful, you’re going to die a lonely old queen“

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It chronicles the lifelong relationship of conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein and actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. In what was a typical choice from a biographical filmmaker, the film largely ignores Bernstein’s career accomplishments, instead focusing on his personal life. While I did find that life interesting and suited for film, the problem here was that the movie failed to make a point about anything.

There was a golden opportunity here to finally recognize the plight of women in these horrible marriages with closeted gay men, and while that is hinted through some scenes, the movie for the most part excused Bernstein’s behavior and painted him in an overly positive light, which was troublesome to witness. There was an interesting discussion to be had here about the sacrifices that these gay men and their poor wives experienced during this period, but the movie only touched upon those very lightly.

The conducting aspect of the story did lead to that incredible performance in the third act, but other than that excellent scene we do not get a firm grasp of this man’s influence on music and Hollywood in general. On the other hand, the spousal relationship was only solidly developed without ever being fully explored, which was essential for this biopic that focused so extensively on the personal life side of things.

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Maestro was clearly a vanity project for Bradley Cooper as he both directed and acted in it. In what was a clear Oscar play (partly shot in black-and-white biopic about a Hollywood person who was also closeted) Cooper definitely tried too hard with this role. I actually found his performance to be pretty strong, in particular his vocal performance. He sold so effortlessly that recognizable accent and pitch of Americans back in this era that I was taken aback by his efforts. But other than his physical and vocal work, he was otherwise overly on-the-nose and unsubtle.

But for all the talk about Cooper’s performance, it was surprising to see that Mulligan was the real star of the picture. In a true scene-stealing turn, she channeled all of the frustrations and pain but also bravery of this admirable woman. Mulligan was particularly superb in the third act where her character suffered through cancer. That part of the movie was quite difficult to watch and absolutely heartbreaking, even more so because she was so amazingly believable.

Maestro is technically polished and artistic. The stark black-and-white cinematography was simply gorgeous to behold, but that incredibly staged one take opening was so astonishing that the movie never quite achieved the same level of virtuosity afterward. The choice to shoot the second half of the story in color was a sound one, but I did miss the black-and-white aesthetic as it was much more pleasing to look at.

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Maestro is also obviously wonderfully scored and the movie made great use of Bernstein’s own compositions. There is a lot of old-school Hollywood magic in its timeless, charming first half that was full of life, excitement and artistry, but the second half jettisoned all of that for family drama that ultimately wasn’t as well explored as it should have been. The cancer storyline, though highly moving and powerful, only further begged the question whether this movie should have been about Bernstein or his wife, who had a much more interesting arc here. The dialogue is pretty good, but not as superb as this story demanded whereas the pacing was too slow with the interview scenes acting pretty much as filler.