Worth: $18.00
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Cast:
Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer
Intro:
… will be fondly remembered for decades to come.
There is a scene towards the final moments of Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial effort, Maestro, in which Cooper – playing famed composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein – layered in prosthetics and sweaty as all hell, dances in a nightclub alongside male students more than half his age. It is haunting. He is lonesome and tortured by his fame and legendary status. Cooper and his cinematographer Matthew Libatique (A Star is Born, Black Swan) coat the entire sequence in this devilish red, evoking a visual sense of hell on Earth, and Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein, the belle of this ball.
Maestro also stars Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre, the composer’s wife and brilliantly talented actress in her own right. Mulligan and Cooper’s performances are arguably the best of the year. Cooper’s Bernstein is immaculate and terrifying, all at the same time. If you’ve seen Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tick, Tick, Boom!, you may twig during moments in Maestro as Bernstein and Felicia argue, and the titular ‘Maestro’ is clearly using these as inspiration in his own work, and craft.
Through its structure, tone and influences, Maestro perfectly captures Bernstein’s torn-nature, and his relentless commitment to being the greatest. The film switches style from simple, 1950s biopics like The Glenn Miller Story, to bombastic musical-inspired sequences that could be ripped straight from Bernstein’s own Broadway shows. There is one moment, in particular, where Cooper stares at a handsome male dancer, watching him with lusty eyes. Felicia notices, and her response is damning. Her awareness of his lingering eyes, at times, absolutely crushes you. Cooper and co-writer Josh Singer rely on this duality throughout the film, and it becomes crucial to the audience’s understanding of how deviously complicated Bernstein, and his love for Felicia, really was.
There are shots in this film that are virtually perfect. Considering the behind the scenes support that Cooper has received from filmmaking legends like Steven Spielberg (who was set to direct the movie before he saw the ‘Shallow’ sequence in A Star is Born and told Cooper, “You’re directing Maestro”) and Martin Scorsese, who executive produced the film, it is hardly a surprise that Maestro has turned out so well-crafted. Just before the movie’s final act, Bernstein conducts Mahler’s Second Symphony and the sequence is jaw-dropping. Cooper’s performance and the movement of the camera is remarkable. Bernstein begins the performance with his hair styled in a classy way, only to become a sweaty, frantic mess by the conclusion. We witness this occur in real time. It is one of the most inspiring musical sequences in recent memory, and one of the powerful reasons why Maestro will be fondly remembered for decades to come.
