Maestro (2023)- BFI London Film Festival 2023

Review

129min

Genre:       Fact-based, Drama, Music, Romance

Director:     Bradley Cooper

Cast:         Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Maya Hawke…and more

Writers:     Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer

-Synopsis-

The life of acclaimed larger-than-life American conductor-composer and cultural icon Leonard Bernstein is revisited through the prism of his complicated marriage to wife and fellow artist Felicia Montealegre, as the stresses of his professional rise and the pressures of a growing family life clash with a fluid sexuality and a dual personality which pull him in opposite directions, until a fateful turn for the family causes him to re-assess his life.

After making an impressive debut as a fully-fledged filmmaker and pulling double-duty both in front of and behind the camera for 2018 ‘A Star Is Born’, Hollywood superstar Bradley Cooper further establishes his directorial and producing talents and underlines his leading man chops by returning to the music world but going biographical, backed by an illustrious team of collaborators which includes messrs Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg as they paint a complex cinematic portrait of a celebrated global artist and bring the extraordinary life of an American music icon to the screen—with bags of style, soul . . . and passion.

Cooper himself stars as affable and charismatic Massachusetts music prodigy Leonard Bernstein, making a name for himself as a composer in New York City and rising in the classical music world to become an unexpectedly young conducting sensation whilst dipping his talented toes in jazz and popular music, all the while charming everyone living fast and exploring his sexuality. But his life takes a fateful turn when he meets Costa Rican-Chilean American actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), as their whirlwind marriage turns into a well-to-do family life whilst his career takes him to the summit of the American music scene as he conquers Broadway and Hollywood, only for everything to be put at risk by a multi-faceted and supressed persona he can’t fully come to terms with, and for things to come full circle after a devastating diagnosis.

It will come as no surprise from a Leonard Bernstein biopic that the music is a key component of the film and at times a character unto itself, as his eclectic catalogue is allowed to rouse the audience with a mix of traditional symphonic and choral pieces mixed with his iconic compositions for stage & screen, while Cooper & co. find creative and at times even dreamlike ways to show the creative process which gave us his own work and his interpretations of other masters. Not to mention some flashy transitions and grand performance sequences that make it all pop off the screen, whilst adding beauty and energy to the narrative and moving the storyline along.

The film is not short of style credentials either, recreating the looks and fashions of mid-20^th century America and high society East Coast living in particular with sterling production and costume designs, while cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, A Star is Born) captures everything with a blend of bristling monochrome for the earlier days and vivid colour for the family life later era, and all in narrow old school academy ratio for intimacy and character focus. Then there’s the brilliant makeup and prosthetics work of Kazu Hiro (Darkest Hour, Bombshell) to help turn Cooper into Bernstein at various stages of life, which when you look past the predictable accompanying controversy is just another masterful effort from the Oscar-winning Japanese visual artist.

But ‘Maestro’ is even more so an intimate portrait of an artist and complex public figure, and a dual portrait at that, as the film’s two above-the-title stars showcase a magical chemistry from virtually their first frame on screen together, whilst delivering rich individual performances for their own characters.

A very busy Bradley Cooper delivers a real tour de force as an iconic composer-conductor, musician, teacher, and artist, who refused to be put in a box and always straddled two personas, caught between the introvert creator and extrovert performer, and between the family man patriarch and the carefree bi-sexual playboy. And the star/director does a sterling job in charmingly bringing to the screen a sweet-talking, personable, and charming figure of mid-20^th century American society, whilst threading in the selfishness plus a growing malaise and melancholy buried beneath Bernstein’s alluring façade, and the contradictions in his personality.

The always excellent Carey Mulligan meanwhile delivers an equally impressive, layered and poignant performance which proves a more than worthy counterpoint to Cooper’s turn, as the slowly drained and disappointed but loyal companion and facilitator of Bernstein’s genius, and the internally conflicted bedrock of their complicated family life. With both stars not only bringing oodles of charisma to their roles as high society East Coasters but also nailing their characters’ charming early 20^th century transatlantic accents, and the film’s breezy flowing dialogue by Cooper and his co-screenwriter Josh Singer (Spotlight, First Man).

Two films into his directorial career and Hollywood superstar Bradley Cooper seems thus far dedicated to storytelling of the musical variety, as he takes a leaf out of the Clint Eastwood playbook by finding the perfect balance for his time on camera and behind it, and the result is a polished and rousing triumph which breathes 21^st century life into a titan of 20^th century music.

The Bottom Line…

Equal parts stylish music biopic, unconventional relationship drama, and pulsating period portrait of an American cultural icon and artistic genius—with the complex personality and personal life to match—‘Maestro’ soars thanks to the towering performances of its two leads and the assured baton of its conductor both in front of and behind the camera, as Bradley Cooper’s impressively quick rise as a fully-fledged filmmaker reaches another level.

‘Maestro’ is available on Netflix from the 20th of December.

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