Bradley Cooper is a talented filmmaker. He has an eye for composition, knows how to get a good performance out of his actors (except himself, ironically. More on that later), and knows how to pull off big, swelling, emotional moments and muted, intimate ones. If only he would pick a project that his skills could elevate rather than one that makes his work stand out from how unremarkable the rest of the movie is. The problems with his new film “Maestro” are the same as those with his debut “A Star is Born.” Both films want to say something, but they don’t know what exactly they want to say. They end up juggling too many threads of ideas and not focusing on any of them enough to develop them thematically or emotionally.
If you took the script of ‘Maestro’ and stripped it of any explicit reference to Leonard Bernstein, nothing about the film would change. That’s not to say the film needs to play like a checklist of Bernstein’s accomplishments, but it never feels like Cooper or co-writer Josh Singer are interested in what Bernstein’s work means and why it makes us feel the way we do when we hear it. Instead, they focus primarily on his marriage to Felicia Montealegre, which subverts the typical “life of a great person” biopic structure but fails to do anything with that storyline that helps us understand Bernstein or his work in any meaningful way.
So, if “Maestro” isn’t about Leonard Bernstein, what is it about? You could argue it’s about Felicia, but she is never 100% of the film’s focus, and most of that character’s depth comes not from the material but from Carey Mulligan’s interpretation of it. She brings an emotional interiority that stands in stark contrast to Cooper’s showy, lifeless portrayal of Bernstein. Had we been given more than just the two or three scenes where Felicia appears apart from Bernstein, perhaps the decision to focus on their marriage would have made more sense. As is, the film feels way too one-sided toward Bernstein to be as disinterested as it is in him or his work.
The film ends up being about Cooper himself rather than Bernstein. Casting yourself as the main character is a risky choice that can work if you are willing to be critical of yourself — which is why Woody Allen works well as the lead of his best films, and his output gets significantly worse the further he gets from the center. But Cooper can’t be critical of himself here. For one thing, he’s playing an actual person, and to be self-critical, you must also be willing to interrogate the person you’re playing. It can be done tastefully, but Cooper so clearly reveres Bernstein that any reflection on himself or his subject is rendered ineffective. His performance is attention-grabbing in all the wrong ways, which includes the decision to use makeup to make him look more like Bernstein. It doesn’t work at all because he still just looks like himself, and it causes his face to have an uncanny stiffness. He’s a bit better when his performance is purely physical (as in the magnificent scene where he conducts Mahler in the church), but it still reeks of impersonation rather than evocation. Nothing about his performance makes you feel like you’re watching Leonard Bernstein, only a poorly produced copy.
Cooper begins “Maestro” with a quote from Bernstein, “A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.” This is Cooper’s thesis statement for his film, but it's a baffling way to begin a movie that doesn’t provoke any questions. There can be no tension in “Maestro” because there are no contradictions. To be contradictory, you need to be willing to be messy, but Cooper’s film is so technically precise and unchallenging that it sucks all life from it. At least he got the not answering questions part right.
