Maestro (2023) – Play Me Off

Released: 20th December 2023
Seen: 15th January 2024

With the Oscar nominations being announced just a few days ago, the time has come to tackle the annual tradition of playing catch-up on every nominated film that I somehow managed to miss throughout the year. Sometimes a film just isn’t released down here before the nominations (That’s happening with over a dozen films that I could see), sometimes a film is released but falls past the radar of must-see (how the hell was I meant to know that The Creator would be an Oscar nominee) and sometimes a film just seems like it’s going to be something I’m going to hate trying to review and because this is an unpaid hobby I avoid it until absolutely required… my dislike of biopics put Maestro firmly in that category and while I can admit it’s great, it’s still not my cup of tea.

Maestro tells the life story of legendary composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper), specifically the story of his relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) and how it’s strained by Leonard’s repeated affairs with other men. Throughout their marriage we witness the highs and lows, Felicia’s acceptance of her husband’s sexuality and her attempt to help him keep it secret to protect his image. It occasionally stops to show elements of his work life, the composing and conducting that made Leonard Bernstein a name worth dropping in a verse of The End Of The World (As We Know It) but for the most part it’s a story about a man who is unable to be his true self in the real world and pours all his love and passion into his music.

To give credit where it’s due, Maestro is a gorgeous-looking film that’s clearly a labour of love from everyone involved. Every camera movement, every inch of the set design, every strand of hair that’s been perfectly arranged on Bradley Cooper’s head to help transform him into Bernstein is meticulous and profound to look at. It’s confirmation of something that a lot of people undoubtedly already knew, namely that Bradley Cooper is an incredible director and everything he makes when he’s behind the camera is a must-see film. It’s not a question of if but a question of when he will be in the Best Director discussion when it comes Oscar time.

It also must be noted that the performances in Maestro are uniformly excellent, especially by the two leads who completely vanish into the role. It’s not even a remote surprise that these two performances are basically what pushed this entire film into the Oscar conversation because they are absolutely brilliant. The camera will linger on a scene for an eternity just because it needs to capture every little twitch of Carey Mulligan’s eyebrow, the music will completely cut out so we can hear every little inflection that Bradley Cooper has put into his expertly crafted Bernstein voice. Even with a large supporting cast, the film lives solely on the raw talent of the two leads who manage to carry the entire film on their backs with ease.

Where Maestro fumbles is with the standard issues with biopics (ones that make the entire genre a thing I usually avoid if possible), namely that in trying to condense a complicated life into a 2-hour film a lot of the nuance has to be removed. In this case that ‘nuance’ is “Most of Leonard Bernstein’s actual career”. While there are a few scenes of him conducting an orchestra or writing, the bulk of the work he’s known for happens offscreen where we can’t see it. When we do see it, we only see minor elements of it and not the interesting stuff. For example, we witness the writing of one of Bernstein’s pieces known as Mass but we don’t get to talk about how the FBI thought it might contain leftist messages in the Latin text. There’s no talk of Bernstein’s charity work, his protests against the Vietnam war, raising money for AIDS research, none of it – and while obviously, you can’t fit everything a person did into a 2-hour film, to cut so much important information out to focus on a plot that belongs in a lifetime original movie feels kind of insane.

There’s the other big problem Maestro has, one it shares with Bohemian Rhapsody which is that it takes a very well-known gay figure and focuses almost completely on that one relationship where they were about 99% straight and them being gay is seen as an obstacle to overcome. Now, Bernstein really did have a long marriage to Felicia and had kids with her, the film doesn’t need to pretend that didn’t happen but they could do better about his homosexuality (a thing that Felicia literally called Leonard out on in a letter that’s saved in the Library of Congress, she knew about it so it’s not like this would be hard). The only time the film really lets Leonard be anything other than ‘Straight guy with a problem” is in the opening scene where he’s with Matt Bomer and at the end after Felicia isn’t in the picture… It’s Bohemian Rhapsody with better editing!

Instead of actually dealing with the things that made Bernstein unique, Maestro edits him down to just a mad genius with a thick accent and a strained marriage that he managed to keep intact for most of his life. Sure, it tells that story incredibly well and it’s no shock to see that this film is beloved because what it’s doing is done well, but what it’s doing is so well worn at this point that it’s just not going to ever work for me. There lies the problem with biopics, you can only remove so much of a person’s story before you stop telling their story. This doesn’t feel like the story of Leonard Bernstein, it feels like the story of any random guy during the 60s who married the first woman willing to let him have affairs with men but use her to maintain appearances in society… this guy just happens to occasionally wiggle a stick at a bunch of musicians.

There is no doubt in my mind that for those who enjoy a good biopic, Maestro will work for them. Again, it’s very well acted and incredibly filmed, some sequences are some of the best stuff that have been put on screen in the last year and some shots are so cleverly done that it’s breathtaking. If you’re into biopics and the flaws of the genre don’t bug you, you will have a good time here… but if you’re tired of these stories that take complicated people and strip them of everything that makes them special, which I absolutely am, then this might not do anything for you. It’s going to be interesting to see if this takes anything home on Oscar night, but the fact it made it to the show at all feels like the win in itself.