Maestro
Watching a narrative film made in Hollywood is a lot like riding a skateboard downhill; you look to find your point of balance and once that’s established, gravity will do the rest. That said, I found Maestro a difficult film to find my balance on.
Generally, watching such a film is a very simple matter. You’re given a clearly demarcated protagonist mapped out across a beginning, a middle and an end: all that’s left for you to do is sit there and the experience will be delivered, more or less like a pizza. It’s what big-budget Hollywood specialises in, and generally guarantees.
Anyone who has watched films made outside that market will be aware that the only absolute definition of a film is to say that there will be a start and a finish and anything else can happen in between. Story is not the essential condition.
Films are often called ‘experimental’ if they don’t have a story, and in some respects, Maestro seems to fall closer to this definition, whether that is by accident or design.
The key to this is Bradley Cooper. His name is all over it: he plays the lead role of Leonard Bernstein in a film he has written, directed and also produced.
Cooper is famous as an actor, and it is safe to assume that by virtue of that success he has been able to secure the opportunity to make a film that allows him so many offices, and what appears to be so much control.
The first name to come up during the final credits – archival footage of the maestro conducting, the eponymous genius in full flight – is the producer’s credit for Martin Scorsese.
Scorsese is known not only by his status as a maestro, but by a long, successful career during which he has successfully navigated the marketplace.
Scorsese’s most recent film, Killers of Flower Moon, is an indigenous story. Cooper’s film, according to Netflix, is an LGBTQI+ story. For white male members of the establishment, working within the current marketplace’s taste for ideologically correct entertainment is a condition of this period of history, which places Maestro at an interesting counterpoint to Tar.
Cooper’s film is best described, in terms of both its strengths and weaknesses, as having been made by someone who understands filmmaking as an actor. An actor delivers a performance, and does so on the basis of their skill.
The two leads, Cooper and Carey Mulligan, who plays Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegra Bernstein, provide absolutely stunning performances. The film begins in a somewhat cliched way, with Bernstein being interviewed.
He quotes a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, that his now deceased wife had used to make an observation about him and his lust for life.
From here, the film presents a retrospective in chronology, although not necessarily connected through causality, to build a portrait of these characters and their marriage, which is made complex by Bernstein’s bisexuality and the fame that gives him license to do whatever he wants.
Bernstein seemingly crossed a lot of personal and professional lines, which is especially confronting within a post ‘me too’ rubric.
These scenes, particularly once the film shifts from black and white to colour, are magnificently composed, and demonstrate what mainstream Hollywood does so well, which is to create an idealised reality in a given time period.
This requires a lot of cash. For that reason, these kinds of scenarios are rarely seen outside of big-budget American films.
As far as establishing insight into the characters and their relationships, the film is a little less effective. Many scenes appear to be chosen for their impact as spectacle, rather than character development.
The best example of this is probably Bernstein’s conducting of Mahler’s resurrection symphony at Ely Cathedral, one of the maestro’s most famous performances.
I found it difficult to understand why the scene had been chosen, and how it related to what I had seen before it. However, it is such a stunning set-piece, and such an overwhelmingly affecting piece of music, it swiftly carried me away.
One thing that’s for sure, though, is that Cooper and Mulligan understand their characters intimately. The film hits high gear once Montealegra is diagnosed with cancer, and every scene after that revolves around her dying; the emotional impact on her, and the effect on the family around her.
In this regard, I consider Maestro to be a resounding success. It’s a tableau of scenes that might not deliver a complete narrative experience, in the way someone going to a film of this kind would expect.
It does, however, provide bravura music and visuals as the platform for two tour-de-force performances and may, in that sense, qualify as something of a masterpiece.
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