While the acting and cinematography are great, the story and the characters in Maestro lack their potential.
Maestro (2023) came out on Netflix on December 20th, 2023, and was in limited theaters in November. The film premiered at various film festivals earlier in the fall to good reception. The film has also gotten a couple of Golden Globe nominations and is a sure bet to get some Oscar nominations as well. The film comes after a year of bio-pics like Napoleon and Priscilla.
Bradley Cooper directed and starred as the main character in Maestro (2023). Bradley Cooper also did this with A Star Is Born, which was a viral award-winning film when it came out. Similarly, A Star Is Born is about a fading musician, and Maestro (2023) is about one of the most influential American composers. Both films tackle fame and notoriety in the music industry. Steven Spielberg was originally set to direct Maestro (2023), but after he saw A Star Is Born, he told Bradley Cooper to direct himself. Spielberg stepped aside to take on a producing role.
Bradley Cooper plays Leonard Bernstein, who is a famous American composer and is widely regarded as the first great composer to come from North America. In the film Maestro (2023), we follow his adult life. We also spend more time, seemingly, in his personal life than in his profession. For me, this is one weak point in the film.
Carrie Mulligan, who you might know from Promising Young Woman or Drive, plays Leonard Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre, in Maestro (2023). Both Bradley Cooper and Carrie Mulligan knock it out of the park with their performances, but there’s only so much of two adults arguing and butting heads in a marriage before it becomes a headache.
The relationship is interesting, as we see Leonard Bernstein cheat on her multiple times with men. Bernstein was bisexual in real life, and in the film, this is explored a lot. This brings me to one of my harsh criticisms. In Maestro (2023), we see Bernstein as not really a good person. Sure, he is a one-in-a-million talent, but when it gets to the film’s second half, he is not being faithful to his wife and doing whatever he wants to do. It makes him look extraordinarily selfish and makes it look like he feels like he can get away with anything and walk all over anyone, including his wife.
Later in Maestro (2023), he changes his tune somewhat, but still, I find it hard to reconcile with that. When your protagonist or main character in the film is not necessarily worth rooting for or even liking, it is not fun to watch. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but in this film, I feel like the intention was for us to have at least wanted to see him be better, and he is a little likable.
I found myself losing interest at points in the film where he was cheating, not being honest, and generally being a generic, famous musician/composer. It made his character come off as cocky and arrogant instead of the lovable or important person he was in real life, supposedly.
If they had focused less time on the endless debate he and his wife and his family had and more on how he made some of the more classical music he made, it might’ve felt a little bit more important. Because when we see him in this kind of affair, it’s pretty hard for it not to become just another film that shows a struggling marriage. Then, when you see the scenes of him doing his music, it doesn’t feel as important. Maybe that’s just the musician in me wanting more of the music process.
That leads me to another point in the film; at times, the film seems overly dramatic. You have these unique set pieces, phenomenal cinematography, great makeup, and a great wardrobe, and then we get these long, dramatic scenes.
A couple of these scenes feel like they go on too long, and they even feel like scenes that were made for the Oscars. If you’ve ever watched the Oscars before, they announce the winner when they show the nominees; they show a clip of the movie the person was nominated for. It feels like Maestro (2023) had multiple versions of that for Bradley Cooper and Carrie Mulligan, respectively.
There were parts that you could just pick out of the film and watch to showcase their acting abilities. I don’t think the acting was bad or anything. It was mostly great. But when you don’t care about the characters in the story, I find it hard to care about the film. Sometimes, it comes off as pretentious; as a filmmaker, that’s one of your worst fears.
One thing Bradley Cooper did in A Star Is Born that he did in Maestro (2023) is these intimate portraits of a person. We get these long, drawn-out shots and long takes in the film. A couple of these scenes are just one shot of two people talking, and we can barely even see the two people talking. It makes them more intimate and gives them an almost documentary feel, which is very artistic and fresh.
If anything, Maestro (2023) should get nominated for cinematography at the Oscars, as these techniques saved the film massively for me. It made the film so much easier to watch when I wasn’t caring for the story, as my eyes were easily pleased with nearly every shot of the film. Plenty of shots in the film will be ingrained in my brain for a while.
One of the more notable was the scene between Bernstein and his wife talking outside near their pool. They are both dancing around the subject of his intimacy with a man. They both know that he is being unfaithful to her, but they keep dancing around the subject. Keeping with that theme, the camera is very far away from the two of them; we can barely even see them. This distance creates distance between them, even though they are sitting right next to each other.
This is an interesting technique that many films have used, but big films like this don’t usually take risks like that. A lot of people will find these long scenes boring and hard to watch, but they make me want to pay attention even more when it is done right. It means that the story and the dialogue are right in front of you. We don’t want to get distracted by any fancy editing or camera angles.
As I said before, the acting is phenomenal. Even with the material they are given, they still knock it out of the park, and we are looking at an Oscar or Golden Club win for at least Bradley Cooper or Carrie Mulligan. These scenes are built for award nominations and wins, it feels like. With it being a biopic, this kind of thing always seems to win at award shows. Also, I loved Mia Hawkes’s performance as Bernstein’s daughter, and the few scenes she was in were great. Another little thing I liked was the use of the song “Shout” by Tears For Fears near the end of the film.
Overall, I wanted more out of Maestro (2023), as Bradley Cooper has proven himself to be a director and leading man. I saw great potential in his directing capabilities in A Star Is Born, but it seems that A Star Is Born is still his best-directed film. The future is bright for Bradley Cooper, as he prioritizes great cinematography and acting in his films. So, hopefully, soon, we will see Bradley Cooper direct a film when the story is just as good as the acting and cinematography, and he seemingly isn’t worried about having these Oscar-type scenes.
