Beyond the Baton: the Passion and Pain of Maestro
He was one of 20th century music’s most intense and complex men. Now, 9-time Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper brings Leonard Bernstein to vivid life.
good.film
a year ago
Share
Why should I see Maestro?
It’s sumptuously crafted (and Bradley Cooper’s transformation is stunning), but the real beating heart of the film is the pain and love of a complex marriage with an open secret.
What social causes does the film explore?
LGBTQIA+, Arts & Culture
To say there’s buzz around Maestro is like saying Taylor Swift has been doing pretty well for herself lately, or that Jacob Elordi is relatively easy on the eye. Desperate to pull off an Oscars Best Picture win (like their streaming rivals Apple did with CODA), Netflix has pulled out all the stops to craft a classy biopic of one of America’s most applauded musical talents.
After the awards success of his directorial debut A Star is Born, there’d been huge speculation what multi-hyphenate filmmaker Bradley Cooper would turn his talents to next. That ramped up when the first publicity shot emerged, revealing a barely-recognisable Cooper in full aged prosthetics, and marking the film out as a “serious” artistic endeavour (check it out below).
And of course, no lead-up to a movie release would be complete without a few million clicks of baseless e-rage. In Maestro’s case, it was the silly “nose saga”: an online firestorm erupting over the size of the Jewish Bernstein’s silicon-enhanced proboscis (the “controversy” was quickly extinguished by Bernstein’s own children, who were “perfectly fine” with the final look).
Now, Maestro has taken the stage, dropping on Netflix worldwide for pretend conductors everywhere to wave their remote controls at in glee. But is Cooper’s sophomore feature an artistic triumph, or does his glossy period piece hit a string of sour notes?
Who was Leonard Bernstein?
In a nutshell, Bernstein was one of the most influential conductor-composers of all time, and surprisingly, the first American conductor to lead a major American symphony orchestra (that’d be the New York Philharmonic, trivia lovers).
At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and 60s, he was a national legend, basically synonymous with American classical music – to put his influence into context, he conducted symphonies at the funerals of both Kennedy brothers.
The maestro extraordinaire was also the brain behind West Side Story – proving that even in the world of classical music, you can still have a side hustle in a little Broadway pizazz.
How does Maestro explore Bernstein’s sexuality?
“It didn’t feel like acting. It wasn’t acting, I have to say. Lenny just sort of took hold of me.”
Bradley Cooper
The film is actually less about music and more about love than you might think. ‘Lenny’ admits that “I love people so much it's hard for me to be alone”... a statement that becomes more loaded with meaning the more that Maestro unfolds. Cooper explains the enigma of Bernstein the man by covering his relationships away from the conductor’s stage – the most prominent being his marriage to Chilean-educated actress Felicia Montealegre.
We’re onlookers into their union, from first meeting to their final days, and the passion that turned them into a force. A 1950s power couple, you might say. But under the “radical chic” of these optics lay an open secret: Bernstein was a gay man.
(While it might seem more fitting to retroactively label Bernstein bisexual, scholars seem to agree he was gay. His West Side Story collaborator Arthur Laurents said Bernstein was simply “a gay man who got married. He wasn’t conflicted about it at all. He was just gay.” In a letter to her husband, Montealegre herself wrote, "you are a homosexual and may never change.”)
As Cooper plunges us into the glamour of post-war America, we’re reminded us of two things: the romanticism of the era, and its oppressive unwillingness to accept anything outside of typical nuclear family norms. Bernstein was even advised by the Russian-born conductor of the Boston Symphony to change his name to “Burns” to further his career. It’s not lost on us that if Bernstein couldn’t be a Jew, then he definitely couldn’t be publicly gay.
Privately, though, Lenny openly flirted and slept with men with an almost modern joie de vivre. That’s captured from the very first scene, when Lenny gets the last-minute call to fill in for an unwell conductor, and he leaps from bed – where his male partner still sleeps. There’s no covert shame, no sneaking around; his “other life” is a tacit agreement between he & Felicia.
What does Maestro have to say about marriage and fidelity?
"I saw her bare her soul for Felicia and for me. It’s really kind of a beautiful thing, but it’s scary. And she made me feel safe enough that I could do the same for her.”
Bradley Cooper on his co-star, Carey Mulligan
Remember “I love people so much it's hard for me to be alone”? The surface joy of that sentiment begins to sour the longer Felicia witnesses Leonard’s male flirtations. “Fix your hair,” she snaps at her husband, after catching him kissing (yet another) conquest in their hallway during a party, “You’re getting sloppy.” It’s this growing tension and disillusionment that powers the film into its second act.
Cooper and his Oscar-winning co-writer Josh Singer have made the Bernstein’s 27-year marriage the core focus of Maestro, examining Leonard’s personality and career through the complexity of a partnership that was loving, but like a loaded gun. We’re witness to the complexities of their joint life while being aware that an implosion is just around the corner.
Felicia is no fool. She makes a clear choice in her compromise from the earliest stages of their courtship – shot in achingly romantic black & white – telling Lenny with a breathy confidence, “I know exactly who you are. Let’s give it a whirl” (a line that’s echoed later, as Felicia admits to Bernstein’s sister Shirley: “I've always known who he is”).
Despite the obvious reason to turn down his proposal, it’s hard to blame Felicia for marrying Bernstein; her husband is genuinely adoring, erudite and wildly talented. There’s another early clue to her motives when she reveals that Lenny smells like her own father – a scent that, to her, translates to safety.
But after a decade, these rose-coloured bonuses have eroded. Felicia is embittered at the sham she continues for the sake of their children, and Leonard is unapologetic for what, in his eyes, were necessary sacrifices. It all builds to a meaty, bitter argument; the emotional crux of the film that Cooper chooses to play out in a single wide, unbroken scene… with floating Thanksgiving Day parade balloons juxtaposed in the windows outside.
What are critics saying about Maestro?
“Cooper delivers one of his finest performances, playing a complicated family man who desired men and couldn’t deny that desire… even while loving his wife.”
- Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
“Engrave an Oscar for Bradley Cooper. Alive with glorious music, the film resonates with the love the legend feels for the wife who lives with his demons.”
- Peter Travers, ABC News
“Maestro succeeds because it is candid about the sacrifices which art demands of its practitioners… and their families and partners.”
- Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
Fully on board, or disagree big time? We’d love to hear your take. Leave a review to share your thoughts with the good.film community!
So what’s the takeaway from Maestro?
For a man driven relentlessly by the pursuit of music, it’s ironic that the power of Maestro comes in the pauses between the notes. It’s the looks between characters – the words left unsaid – that lends Cooper’s film its weighted heartbreak.
When Bernstein’s teenage daughter asks him if “the rumours” are true, Bernstein’s long, loaded pause hangs in the air – like the aeon between the first, piercing ‘crack!’ of a sawn-through tree and it falling to the forest floor. The father is on a knife’s edge between confession and protection towards his daughter, and Cooper plays the moment to perfection.
Similarly, Carey Mulligan gives a silent look that could fill an entire essay when, as Felicia, she witnesses her husband squeezing his male companion’s hand at an opera premiere instead of hers (the trio are sitting side-by-side). As Lenny’s sister Shirley later reminds Felicia, in somewhat of an omen: “There's a price for being in my brother's orbit, you know that.”
It’s this bittersweet human story that forms the backbone of Maestro: not the detail of a chord progression or a baton flick, but the inner desires and anguish and collateral damage that defined Leonard Bernstein and his family. We feel them, fully realised on screen.
That’s not easy to do for any filmmaker, and yet in just his second film, Bradley Cooper brings the famed genius to life in confident, sometimes dazzling strokes. It’s a work of pure passion – a love letter, a love story, and a true musical feast.
When is the movie Maestro coming out?
Maestro is now streaming worldwide on Netflix.
