R 2023 Romance/Musical 2h 9m
Since Maestro is about a musician, one might be tempted to fill their review with bad music references. Don’t worry, you’re in a safe space. This movie hit a lot of wrong notes.
Maestro is a decades-long love story of Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and his wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan) as told by an aging Bernstein to reporters. The aging Bernstein serves as bookends to the movie at its beginning and ending. The rest of the movie seems to fall into three sections. This is a true story and I recount its events so “spoiler warning?"
First, there is the “black and white era” which I cleverly named because it is shown in black and white and filmed to look like a movie of that era. Additionally, the dialog seems to be written to match the period; it’s a little stilted and artificial but meant to be charming. The dialog sounds recited rather than organic. I felt like Mulligan was channeling a young Katherine Hepburn. Cooper sports a prosthetic nose throughout the entire movie. In this part of the movie, it makes him look a little like a young Barry Manilow. On the topic of noses, Cooper appears to have made the choice to have Bernstein sound like Cary Grant talking with his nose plugged. At one point in the courtship, Lenny and Felicia are suddenly in a metaphorical staging of New York, New York that was just confusing.
If one were to start a drinking game and had to take a shot every time Bernstein is seen with a cigarette, everyone would die of alcohol poisoning before the of the movie and would probably hospitalized before the first part of the movie is over.
I call the second section of the movie “Lenny is an A-hole.” There is a time jump into the 60’s and 70’s, the movie becomes color and the actors are aged a little. Cooper now looks like Dennis Farino. It is established early on in the movie that Lenny is a sexual being before he and Felicia marry. Now, it is made clear Lenny’s sexual dalliances continue despite his marriage. Since Lenny is such a great artist Felicia tolerates the affairs. Although she does tolerate this, she is not happy. This “woman who accepts sadness to foster her husband’s greatness” feels like a trope in biopics and it’s an annoying one. One character says “something about her seems crushed.” Who talks like that? When Lenny is unhappy, he says “summer doesn’t sing in me.” I’ve never met anyone who has ever said anything like that in real life. Lenny and Felicia have a big fight during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade where the entire transcript of the fight has never been uttered by humans.
I call the last section, “Bye Felicia” because Felicia gets life-threatening cancer. I disliked the first two sections of the movie but thought this section worked. The characters seemed more authentic. The baggage between the leads from the earlier part of the movie helped make this section more interesting and emotional. If the earlier sections of the movie had been trimmed and this had been the focus of the movie, I may have liked the movie. Carey Mulligan was able to show what a good actress she is here.
I did not like Maestro. I was not engaged with the characters. I was often bored watching the movie. The dialog was too artificial. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not recommend this movie.
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