Review: With Stunning Visuals, ‘Maestro’ Explores the Legendary Leonard Bernstein

It’s interesting that Bradley Cooper chose stories centered on musicians for his first two attempts as a director, despite not being a professional musician himself. His interpretation of A Star is Born (2018) proved that the famous tale can work with both actors and singers as the protagonists, while his new feature, Maestro, is a more traditionally structured biopic/drama.

Cooper clearly has as much interest and respect for his characters as a director as he does as an actor. But his period piece makes you wonder if Cooper could have taken even more advantage of the already interesting legend of Leonard Bernstein.

Like Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things from earlier this month, Maestro coincidentally spends the entire first act in black and white before switching to color for the rest of the movie. There are other retro filming techniques, like dissolves and a 1:33 aspect ratio, to aid the old time feel of the Bernstein story set from 1943 to 1990.

Cooper plays the respected composer-conductor at the prime of his career arranging the music for popular Broadway musicals like On the Town (1944) and West Side Story (1957), composing the score for a Hollywood classic, Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront (1954), and reaching his true passion of classically conducting full orchestras.

At the forefront of this cinematic tale is his marriage and family with actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) despite Lenny’s wandering eye and past sexual history with men. Sarah Silverman, Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke and Michael Urie co-star as various figures in the Bernstein couple’s lives.

Maestro has a lot going for it visually. The performances are pretty good, especially Mulligan, who has been a consistently intriguing actress the past 20 years. Matthew Libatique’s cinematography is simply stunning — some of the best this year. The prosthetics — following the controversy of Cooper opting for a fake nose to portray Jewish Bernstein — for the aged characters in the latter half of the film are surprisingly solid and appear natural. (Though, with how similarly shaped Cooper’s nose is to the real Bernstein, you have to wonder why he felt the extra prosthetic was necessary.)

Cooper demonstrates the artistic potential to be on a par with Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford as one of the essential actor-turned-directors. If anything, Cooper’s and Libatique’s efforts make Maestro worth viewing on a large screen.

Yet, we can’t help but feel Cooper and co-screenwriter Josh Singer dropped the ball and played it a little too safe with the script. Maestro reminded me a lot of Richard Attenborough’s Chaplin (1992), where the famous subject’s gossip and private life are highlighted more than the actual career and talent. Yet even with the focus on personal life, we still only get a surface-level critique on either Lenny or Felicia as people.

It’s pretty underwhelming in a post-Dewey Cox world where audiences can recognize cliché cues and tropes in biopics. Nevertheless, Cooper’s style and range are evident enough for me to be interested in what his third project as a filmmaker might be — and if he will play yet another musical artist with a distinct accent.