I had hoped to enjoy 'Maestro'. It is a film for adult audiences, featuring actors I appreciate (Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan) and directed by that same Bradley Cooper. It deals with a true American Icon (composer / conductor Leonard Bernstein) and deals with the 'man' inside that icon. In this time of Holiday Blockbusters it promised to appeal to an audience like me. And, in fact, it did. The theatre was two-thirds full; a first-time-since-the-Pandemic at this small art house.
The film, however, is something of a mess. It is confused about the type of picture it wants to be. In its first thirty minutes it takes on a flight-of-fancy aura; it is as though Bernstein and his soon to be wife are in a musical-comedy with the background stage settings changing as if by magic. The film's first half is in black and white; I imagine a testament to The Forties and early Fifties (the time period covered by those scenes) but, in fact, lots of color-films were made at that time.
Leonard Bernstein was bisexual. And that bisexuality is, in fact, revealed, but revealed in a coy, teasing, easy-to-misunderstand way. And then there is the background music, all of which was composed by Bernstein, but not all of which fits the scene it backgrounds. The selection from his 'West Side Story' is the most emblematic of this. But not the only example.
For me, the story belongs to Bernstein's wife Felicia (played by Mulligan). She is the wife of a bisexual man; a fact that is problematic enough. But he is a man who is always center-stage, and for whom she gave up a promising career to raise their children, support her husband, and who suffers in silence until she can suffer silently no longer. But even here (and though Mulligan has long been a favorite of mine), there is a smile on her character that (a) rings insincere and (b) is repeated so often that I wanted to scream, No more. But, sadly, there is more; the most cinematic, most hard-to-believe smile coming, in a hard-to believe scene, in London's Westminster Cathedral.
Finally there is the finale. I will give nothing away when I say that the film ends one scene too late, it is one scene too long. A scene in which Bernstein instructs a young orchestra conductor would be as appropriate an ending as one could hope for.
But then .....
The film, however, is something of a mess. It is confused about the type of picture it wants to be. In its first thirty minutes it takes on a flight-of-fancy aura; it is as though Bernstein and his soon to be wife are in a musical-comedy with the background stage settings changing as if by magic. The film's first half is in black and white; I imagine a testament to The Forties and early Fifties (the time period covered by those scenes) but, in fact, lots of color-films were made at that time.
Leonard Bernstein was bisexual. And that bisexuality is, in fact, revealed, but revealed in a coy, teasing, easy-to-misunderstand way. And then there is the background music, all of which was composed by Bernstein, but not all of which fits the scene it backgrounds. The selection from his 'West Side Story' is the most emblematic of this. But not the only example.
For me, the story belongs to Bernstein's wife Felicia (played by Mulligan). She is the wife of a bisexual man; a fact that is problematic enough. But he is a man who is always center-stage, and for whom she gave up a promising career to raise their children, support her husband, and who suffers in silence until she can suffer silently no longer. But even here (and though Mulligan has long been a favorite of mine), there is a smile on her character that (a) rings insincere and (b) is repeated so often that I wanted to scream, No more. But, sadly, there is more; the most cinematic, most hard-to-believe smile coming, in a hard-to believe scene, in London's Westminster Cathedral.
Finally there is the finale. I will give nothing away when I say that the film ends one scene too late, it is one scene too long. A scene in which Bernstein instructs a young orchestra conductor would be as appropriate an ending as one could hope for.
But then .....