‘Who abandoned Snoopy in the vestibule?‘
The prevailing narrative that has emerged around Bradley Cooper is that he is what my students would call a ‘try hard’. The perception being that his desperation for awards and accolades has crystallised into a monomaniacal obsession. Whether that’s true or not has no bearing on this film but what isn’t in doubt is that this shouldn’t win anything. It’s pretty average…
Cooper plays famous composer Leonard Bernstein in a film that spans decades. Carey Mulligan is great as Bernstein’s long-suffering wife Felicia and it is her masterful performance that stops Maestro from being a total wash.
The problem is that Cooper’s iteration of Bernstein is immensely obnoxious and unlikeable. Not every protagonist needs to be a hero, of course, but they do at least have to be interesting. Maybe it’s because I simply don’t care enough about Bernstein himself (to me, he’s just a name that is shouted out in the middle of that one R.E.M song), or maybe it’s because this film feels haphazard and unfocused but I really found nothing to connect with here. What about this man’s life justifies a two-hour-plus biopic? Damned if I know.
By all accounts, Cooper delivers an incredibly accurate impression of Bernstein but that’s all this is – an impression. I never got a sense of a real person behind all the showy acting. Cooper apparently spent six years preparing for the now infamous conductor scene… it’s difficult to understand how anyone can think that this is a good use of someone’s time – and that’s coming from a man who has seen every Hellraiser movie.
Maestro is competent and has some great moments (the argument scenes are good) but in the end, this feels like Oscar bait with nothing much to say when you peel back the veneer of prestige and worth. This is a film destined to be totally forgotten in six months time.