Maestro

Director: Bradley Cooper (USA). Year of Release: 2023

New York State. Some reviewers have said we’re in 1946, but there are definite references to Hitler bombing Poland. As we see the logos of the various companies which have funded the film, we hear piano music. The music is difficult, and not particularly melodic. Before the camera pulls in on the pianist, we see the opening credits: “A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension within the contradictory answers.”

This quote, by Leonard Bernstein, is the most profound thing we’ll see in this film by a country mile. Maestro is a film which provokes few questions other than “why did anyone bother with this second-rate melodrama?” Maybe I missed some brilliant subtlety, but my experience was less of a film which looked at the tension of contradictions than one which fixed on the old biopic template, and was wary of adding anything which provided too many complications.

But we must move on with the Plot, where an older Bernstein is talking to a camera crew about a woman who he does not name. He says that he regularly sees her ghost, and that this dismays his children, who wish that they can see her. This sort of sentimental drivel has been lapped up by various critics who really should know better. It is a special pleading that although Bernstein regularly cheated on his wife (and SHOCK HORROR with men), he remained a loyal man at heart.

Cut to: a young(ish) Leonard Bernstein being called to a performance because the regular composer Bruno Volter has fallen ill. He rushes to the concert hall, pausing only to beat a drum roll on the buttocks of the man who has been sharing his bed. There is no time to rehearse, so conductor and audience just have to trust each other. The performance is a success, and becomes the making of the large-nosed conductor.

One of the least interesting discussions of Maestro has been the accusations of “Jew-face”. Actor Bradley Cooper wears a large prosthetic nose. Prejudice deems that Jews have large noses, so this is obviously antisemitic, innit? Except that Leonard Bernstein really did have a large nose, and footage of him towards the film’s end show that his nose is even bigger than the one that Cooper wears. Of all the things to accuse Maestro of, it’s a shame that so many journalists picked this up.

At a party, Bernstein meets the Costa Rican/Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre. This sort of setting will become regrettably familiar. So many scenes are set in swish parties or, later, in Bernstein’s huge Connecticut summer house (with its own swimming pool), that it’s difficult to feel much empathy for any of the main characters. Their distressing problems (like turning up a day late to a Thanksgiving party), just feel too trivial to warrant all the screaming hissy fits.

Of course, there are more troubling problems hidden beneath the surface. Bernstein is not just playing away, but he’s that most scandalous of things, a practising homosexual/bisexual. And yet the scandal feels fabricated. Most of Bernstein’s philandering takes place off screen, and we see little prejudice against his sexuality. Instead, we are asked to sympathise with Bernstein’s daughter Jamie, as she is embarrassed about all the gossip.

We view, but don’t properly deal with, the fact that Bernstein was working in a time when Jewish artist were not welcomed into WASP American culture. We see a young Bernstein being advised to change his name to the less Jewish Burns (the German subtitles in tonight’s screening used the more kosher “Berns” which somewhat lessens the impact of what he was being asked to do), but to his credit, Bernstein retained his name and decided to fight on his own terms.

A scene towards the end sums up the film’s weaknesses for me. An older Bernstein is sitting in on a rehearsal led by a young African-American conductor. As the orchestra goes through its moves, Bernstein gets increasingly agitated. In the end, he steps in and shows the younger man how it should be done. Everyone is hugely impressed. And yet if you watch Bradley Cooper’s limp hands, his conducting is terrible, showing none of the professionalism which Cate Blanchett showed in Tár..

Although there is another scene which is almost as irritating, and quite out of mood with the rest of the film. It must be the mid to late 1980s, as Bernstein is travelling along in a speeding car and REM’s “Its the End of the World As We Know It” is blaring along on the car stereo. Just as they approach the list of famous people with the initials LB starting with a shouted LEONARD BERNSTEIN, the car pulls to a halt. Corny doesn’t even start to describe the scene.

The 4:3 aspect ratio has been used in a number of recent films to show the suffocating climate which is restricting the lives of the protagonists. Here, the effect is more to remind us of afternoon tv movies, which don’t offer anything challenging, but are pleasant enough to watch along with. For most of the time, nothing of any real importance happens, until we have some infidelities and a cancer scare to tug on our heartstrings. But I never cared for any of the main characters.

Maestro has a soap opera feel of a story of a rich couple who fall out but stay together because, oh I don’t know, maybe Bernstein believes the sentiment that he offers journalists. What we rarely see is what made him interesting as a person. And some of his most intriguing collaborators like Stephen Sondheim are mainly only mentioned in news reports, Maestro’s dedenders may say that it’s telling a human story. But did it have to be quite so boring?

I do realise that I seem to be in a minority here, and many reviewers have loved the film and talked of possible Oscars (to which I say, “point proved”), but this was a film with which I felt it hard to feel any emotional engagement, and learned little about someone about whom there is plenty to say.