‘Maestro’ review: Bradley Cooper disappears into Leonard Bernstein
Bradley Cooper disappears into Leonard Bernstein in “Maestro,” a surprisingly witty and artful retelling of the conductor-composer’s life.
Cocooned in makeup, Cooper is unrecognizable except for his eyes. This is an uncanny impression, especially in an opening scene that emphasizes the lines and creases in the composer’s well-worn face.
It is perhaps more impressive when actors portray their subjects through channeling some essential quality rather than through meticulous impersonation — Austin Butler in “Elvis,” for instance, who didn’t look like Elvis but felt like Elvis — but Cooper is never anything less than convincing, and his charm and talent shine easily through the mask.
The narrative begins in the 1940s, when the young conductor got his first big break by being asked to fill in for the ailing conductor Bruno Walter at the New York Philharmonic.
Bernstein suggests later in the film that he would be a “piano teacher” if not for this stroke of luck, but somehow we doubt that. He’s a natural self-promoter, patting his boyfriend (played by Matt Bomer) on the buttocks like a pair of bongos as he leaves the apartment for his career-defining gig. His self-possession is palpable, and we suspect it will play at least as much of a role in his becoming the first great American-born conductor as his talent.
We spend most of the film in the company of this charming, convivial, entitled man as he marries Felicia Montealegre (played with dry trans-Atlantic wit by Carey Mulligan) and engages in a seemingly endless progression of affairs with much-younger men.
We see Bernstein composing, we see how comfortable he is in his understanding and performance of music, and yet many major events of his career occur offscreen. Even the triumph of “West Side Story” is only mentioned in passing via a radio broadcast.
This is not the kind of movie about an artist where a titanic event occurs in their life and they dash off to write a piece about it in a fit of divine inspiration. It has no interest in checking boxes and thus avoids the tedium of so many biopics.
Instead, the film has bigger fish to fry, focusing on the peculiarity of Bernstein’s marriage to Montealegre. While most biopics of “great men” treat their relationships as secondary concerns, “Maestro” gives arguably greater psychological depth to Montealegre, who is frank about what it means to be involved with such a man, than it does to the composer.
Bernstein seduces his male cohorts almost effortlessly. In a time when it was much riskier than now to attempt a same-sex liaison — even in the relatively tolerant circles through which Bernstein moved as a moneyed New York City elite and left-wing activist — he seemed to know exactly where to look for his next fling.
Montealegre tolerates these affairs up to a point, though we never really understand why Bernstein is so compelled to engage in them. He seems bisexual enough to really love and care for Montealegre, and he never comes across as “repressed.” Perhaps his desirability as a sexual partner acts as confirmation of his own greatness in his mind.
There is no trace of false modesty in this man, who takes the podium at the Philharmonic as if destined from birth, his cartoonishly exaggerated conducting style already fully formed at age 25. He has no qualms about drawing attention to himself, and an ecstatic six-minute sequence towards the end is as much about his love of music as about the infuriating extroversion of an artist totally confident in his talent.
One of the delights of the film is to spend time among people as interesting and gifted as Bernstein and his famous friends like Aaron Copland and Jerry Robbins (played by Brian Klugman and Michael Urie, respectively). “Maestro” revels in the intelligence of these people.
As in Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” from earlier this year, much of the dialogue is fast-paced, witty banter that could’ve come from Cary Grant’s mouth — perhaps because Cooper’s Bernstein fancies himself a sort of Cary Grant figure, with a prickly and knowing charm.
Also like “Oppenheimer” (and Yorgos Lanthimos’ very different “Poor Things”), the film shifts from black and white to color at different periods of its hero’s life. What is unexpected is how saturated the color is; it’s nearly Technicolor, with deep reds and autumnal greens and golds.
Cooper, who directed the film, risks and gets away with a few other striking stylistic gambits. Characters always seem to be leaving the theater and magically being transported somewhere else. One impressive shot even pays tribute to an iconic photo from Elliott Erwitt, who died this year.
This feels like a real movie, not a television biography, and if Cooper the actor disappears into his character, Cooper the director shines through fiercely. Following “A Star Is Born,” this could be his next step towards becoming the best American director-star this side of Clint Eastwood.
‘Maestro’
Stars (out of four): 3 stars
Runtime: 2 hours, 9 minutes
Rated: PG-13 (for some language and drug use)
How to watch: On Netflix