(SPOILER ALERT: Maestro is a film about people who actually lived and were a lot more than semi-famous. If you do not already know some of the stuff about these folks that may or may not be alluded to in this piece… well, what can I say? You have been advised.) Onward:
There are such things as motion pictures which you really want to like… that you fully anticipate you will like… and when they disappoint, they can produce such a feeling of negativity that it is hard to be objective. Such is the case with me and Maestro.
It is just that the film played into my (unreasonable?) expectations in such a way as to make it difficult to point out the many good things about the movie. The photography, for instance. First rate. Carey Mulligan’s performance… even before her character gets cancer… and even though her director elects to play her best scene with her back to camera and entirely in a long shot… is sure to bring her an Oscar nomination. The cancer thing, of course, is always sure-fire with Academy voters, but Ms. Mulligan does not need to rely on that. This is terrific work from a very solid actress.
Her co-star, Bradley Cooper, who also directed, co-wrote, and co-produced, does a more than credible job as the star of the movie and is bound to be listed among the nominees for Hollywood hardware when all of that comes about in the more-than-soon-enough future.
Cooper essays the title role of the Maestro, Leonard (Lenny) Bernstein, and as his multi-hyphenated credits on the film would indicate, is heavily vested in doing right by one of the super stars of the American musical scene. You don’t have to watch the CBS News Sunday Morning Show, or any of the many other celebrity interview venues, to appreciate Mr. Cooper’s earnestness about the entire project. It has been reported that the actor took lessons in conducting for six years before starting production on the film. That is seriously earnest stuff.
But earnest by itself just does not cut it in the very serious business of storytelling when your subject is as iconic and complicated an individual as Leonard Bernstein. I mean, c’mon: the greatest American musician since Gershwin, a television icon married to one of Broadway’s finest leading ladies while being a semi-closeted gay man in the USA in the mid-20th century… that is a lot of stuff to work with.
And, admittedly, all that is in the movie, but it is all kind of superficial… and so poorly structured as to disappoint, despite the artistry of the photography, the beautifully recorded music, the attention to such details as costuming, makeup, and visuals… even down to using the correct aspect ratios, or color versus black and white, depending on what period is being depicted in the movie at any point in time.
Am I being petty to point out that Bernstein had Stephen Sondheim as a collaborator on two Broadway hits (West Side Story and Candide) but is given not even an off-stage reference in the movie, save for the name “Stevie,” shouted out across a crowded room by Bernstein’s sister? Each of these guys are great success stories, neither was (apparently) very impressed with the other, and both were gay men. Shouldn’t there have been at least one line of dialogue … a throwaway line? Something? Comden & Green and Jerome (Jerry) Robbins get some salutes in the film as does Aaron Copland and Edna St. Vincent Millay… was Sondheim considered too obscure… even for a disparaging remark?
Did the filmmaker not remember that Leonard Bernstein led the Philharmonic in Tel Aviv… in 1947… while Arab bombs were landing within earshot, and that he introduced an entire generation of Americans to classical music through the Young People’s Concerts, on national television? Isn’t the fact that Jerome Robbins, arguably the most important collaborator Bernstein ever had, got fired off the movie West Side Story worthy of a scene? A brief encounter? A line of dialogue?
I don’t mean to be snide. And I fully realize that what I looked forward to in this movie is not an easy thing to pull off. But you are Bradley Cooper, you have had a great success as a filmmaker with A Star is Born, you are serious enough about playing this new role to take conducting lessons for six years, and you obviously are smart enough to recognize that the character who you wish to bring to the screen is one of the more complex artists of the 20th century.
One might wish Mr. Cooper had asked, how about we get someone other than ourselves to punch up the screenplay by Josh Singer? Especially since it appears that neither Martin Scorsese nor Stephen Spielberg could get this film off the ground with the Singer screenplay, despite the writer’s Oscar win for Spotlight.
Just maybe it would be a good idea to bring in a writer with sterling credentials to bring all these elements together into a more interesting/complex motion picture. Maybe Aaron Sorkin or Tom Stoppard? Or, as Cooper determined, you could do it yourself…
Making motion pictures is a collaborative process. It is one of the things that makes movies unique. I just don’t buy into the auteur school of picture making, despite solid examples to the contrary (Chaplin, Keaton, plus all of those French guys from the 50s). I come from the school of producers who, when the director asks the writer a question, wants to hear the answer…out loud.
Had that theory of collaboration been applied to this movie, I have to believe Ms. Mulligan’s best scene would not have been photographed from half a basketball court away, featuring only her back to camera. I also believe that a truly collaborative dialogue between the producer, the director, and the writer (had they all not been the same guy) might well have delivered a more interesting and complicated movie.
I am sorry to rant on so. I lived most of my professional life in Hollywood as a producer of film and television and one of my pet peeves was the proliferation of credits and the advent of the hyphenate (the writer/producer and or the writer/director). It is my bias. Added to that is my own childhood remembrances of a father who was a fine (albeit not nationally known) musician and conductor.
I remember my dad in front of his East LA high school student musicians; they were as motley a crew as the public school system could provide. The quality of their sound varied from year to year, or from one composition to another, depending on its level of difficulty. But no matter what sound emerged, my father loomed over and leaned into that group of musicians as if they were the New York Philharmonic. He was someone Leonard Bernstein might have wished to emulate.
Blessed with physical strength and a great deal of grace, my father would pause between musical interludes to speak to the working-class parents who had come to hear their children play. Years before Leonard Bernstein would do the same thing on national TV… Aaron Rosenzweig would charm those assembled as he taught parent and child together to appreciate classical music.
I brought all that and more to the movie Maestro and came away with less. My bad. Maybe. Here is the good news: now that you have had your expectations for Maestro reduced, I can well imagine that perhaps you will find the movie more enjoyable than did this movie buff. I Hope so. The picture, flawed though it may be, really is well worth seeing.
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