Mae­stro – first-look review

For many, Leonard Bern­stein is one of the great­est Amer­i­can com­posers. A con­duc­tor, pianist and the mind behind scores includ­ing West Side Sto­ry, he was an icon­o­clast beloved by mil­lions, not least because he came to promi­nence just as tele­vi­sions began to pop­u­late house­holds across the coun­try. For years Bernstein’s face was famil­iar, not just to the atten­dees of Carnegie Hall or his pupils, but to the peo­ple who watched him thou­sands of miles away.

His cre­ativ­i­ty was arguably matched only by his charis­ma; one only has to watch archival footage of Bern­stein to under­stand what it was about him that peo­ple so adored. As such, it’s not hard to under­stand why a Bern­stein biopic has been a long time com­ing. For years Mar­tin Scors­ese was inter­est­ed in bring­ing the sto­ry behind the leg­end to life, before the film piqued the inter­est of Steven Spiel­berg, but now – with Scorsese’s bless­ing – the task has fall­en to direc­tor/­co-writer/pro­duc­er/ac­tor Bradley Coop­er, con­tin­u­ing a theme he began with his much-laud­ed reimag­in­ing of A Star is Born.

Yet the open­ing of Mae­stro points to the impor­tance of anoth­er per­son with­in Bernstein’s sto­ry: his wife, Feli­cia Mon­teale­gre (played by Carey Mul­li­gan). The actress met Bern­stein through mutu­al friends in 1946, and the pair hit it off imme­di­ate­ly. Although Coop­er blasts through their courtship at light­ning speed, this is where the film real­ly shines: Feli­cia and Leonard’s ear­ly infat­u­a­tion is por­trayed as a roman­tic spec­ta­cle all of its own. Yet as time goes by, Feli­cia notices Leonard’s wan­der­ing eye (rather clum­si­ly illus­trat­ed through a tap rou­tine which brings to mind the much more seam­less – and amus­ing – ​‘No Dames’ scene from Hail, Cae­sar!) Feli­cia approach­es the del­i­cate sit­u­a­tion with a pro­gres­sive mind­set; she doesn’t mind Leonard’s mar­i­tal indis­cre­tions, so long as he doesn’t embar­rass her. Pre­dictably this is some­thing Bern­stein fails at almost com­i­cal­ly, swoon­ing after much younger men who might as well be name­less for all they con­tribute to the story.

It feels as though Coop­er faired bet­ter when telling a fic­tion­al sto­ry; he strug­gles to cap­ture Bern­stein with any­thing but the broad­est strokes, and although he’s enter­tain­ing (the much-bal­ly­hooed pros­thet­ic nose real­ly isn’t that dis­tract­ing after all) the script itself doesn’t seem over­ly inter­est­ed in giv­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly rev­e­la­to­ry look at Bernstein’s life. Even key moments – such as the com­po­si­tion of West Side Sto­ry and his revival of Mahler’s sym­phonies – are swept past with lit­tle fanfare.

Coop­er makes attempts to tem­per the staid script with direc­to­r­i­al flour­ish­es. He shoots in black and white acad­e­my ratio until Bern­stein and Feli­cia mar­ry, at which point the film switch­es to colour. It’s a hack­neyed short­hand for the entry of colour into Bernstein’s world, and not one that makes much sense; Bern­stein does not seem to change much in the peri­ods before and after meet­ing Felicia.

Mean­while, Bernstein’s queer­ness feels a lit­tle sani­tised. We see him in bed with a man at the film’s start, and there are a cou­ple of ref­er­ences made to his queer­ness. With an opti­mistic eye it could be that Coop­er is attempt­ing to sug­gest Bernstein’s queer­ness was not cen­tral to his per­son­hood, but this is a strange point to make con­sid­er­ing he is such a beloved fig­ure with­in the queer com­mu­ni­ty, and his sex­u­al­i­ty (along with Felicia’s report­ed tol­er­ance of his escapades) is more pro­gres­sive than the film makes it out to be.

At least there’s the music. The film sounds great, although it would be some­thing of a crime if it didn’t. Bernstein’s own com­po­si­tions fit along­side some of the pieces he adored with ease, and it’s a shame the film wasn’t shot entire­ly in the rich black and white that char­ac­teris­es its first act; the switch to colour damp­ens the impact, even with the great Matthew Liba­tique on DoP duties.

As Bern­stein Coop­er is on fine, charis­mat­ic form, and the film is per­haps his strongest cam­paign for an awards sea­son run yet. By con­trast, Carey Mul­li­gan appears a strange choice for Feli­cia (not least because Feli­cia was half-Cos­ta Rican). She is quite ade­quate but strug­gles to keep pace with Coop­er, which means the cou­ple nev­er real­ly appear as the dra­mat­ic dynamos the film wants us to buy them as.

It’s a shame, as there are promis­ing ele­ments of Mae­stro, but they form a rather for­get­table, con­ven­tion­al bio­graph­i­cal dra­ma as a whole – one that sad­ly lacks Bernstein’s mav­er­ick spir­it and warmth, or even cap­tures any­thing about him you couldn’t glean from a quick skim read of Wikipedia. There’s no real sense of his pas­sion, or what set him apart from his peers. One of the great jokes in Todd Field’s Tár is that Lydia Tár claimed to have been men­tored by Bern­stein; how is it that a sin­gle detail in a fic­tion could be more inter­est­ing and reveal­ing than the entire­ty of Cooper’s long-ges­tat­ing pas­sion project?