POSITIVES:
1) The two central performances are both absolutely sensational. Both Cooper and Mulligan have some really jaw dropping scenes and they were what kept me engaged throughout 2) The direction and cinematography are both superb. There are lots of long takes and clever camerawork and this helped to make certain scenes feel much more impactful, such as the big conducting scene near the end that goes on for several minutes with only a couple of cuts 3) Using Bernstein's own pieces as the score for the film was very clever and I loved how over dramatic the score felt a lot of the time
NEGATIVES:
1) I really didn't like the first hour or so of this film while it was in black and white. It just felt so pretentious, fake and full of itself. Also, the characters all talk insanely fast for some reason during the black and white scenes. Things did improve once things went to colour though 2) As the title of this review states, I felt like the film was more of a technical achievement than something I actually enjoyed watching. I didn't really care about any of the characters, in fact I found Bernstein very unlikeable, and I wasn't really invested in the plot 3) As is the case with a lot of biopics, I think this film is guilty of trying to cram an entire person's life into only 2 hours, which makes a lot of things feel very rushed.
1) The two central performances are both absolutely sensational. Both Cooper and Mulligan have some really jaw dropping scenes and they were what kept me engaged throughout 2) The direction and cinematography are both superb. There are lots of long takes and clever camerawork and this helped to make certain scenes feel much more impactful, such as the big conducting scene near the end that goes on for several minutes with only a couple of cuts 3) Using Bernstein's own pieces as the score for the film was very clever and I loved how over dramatic the score felt a lot of the time
NEGATIVES:
1) I really didn't like the first hour or so of this film while it was in black and white. It just felt so pretentious, fake and full of itself. Also, the characters all talk insanely fast for some reason during the black and white scenes. Things did improve once things went to colour though 2) As the title of this review states, I felt like the film was more of a technical achievement than something I actually enjoyed watching. I didn't really care about any of the characters, in fact I found Bernstein very unlikeable, and I wasn't really invested in the plot 3) As is the case with a lot of biopics, I think this film is guilty of trying to cram an entire person's life into only 2 hours, which makes a lot of things feel very rushed.