MAESTRO (2023) – Biography of a maestro that throws little light on his distinguished life and craft
Rating: ⭐⭐

This is obviously another labour of love for director, writer and star, Bradley Cooper. Fresh from the phenomenal success of his romantic epic A Star Is Born with Lady Gaga, Bradley obviously hoped to recreate his success with this take on another complex character linked to music. Maestro is his auto biography of the famous American music composer and conductor, Leonard Bernstein. Bernstein wrote many great works from operas and ballets to symphonies, that are still listened to till this day. His most famous piece of work was for the musical West Side Story. Unfortunately, this biography falls short of providing any enlightenment on Bernstein’s enigmatic life and source of inspiration to his works. Bradley’s Maestro feels very much a case of being more style than substance.
The film is presented predominately in the boxy 4:3 aspect ratio and in black and white. This format seems to be rage in recent arthouse feature films (Saltburn and Eileen). I am not complaining here, just making an observation. Bradley uses this format here to create a stylish look bathed in glorious black and white. The film creatively morphs into colour and later to the conventional 16:9 apect ratio but with no apparent reasons. Apart from being pleasing to look at, we also marveled at how convincing the make-up artists were in making Bradley’s Berstein age from his 20’s to his 70’s. Definitely one for the Academy Awards to acknowledge. The soundtrack music felt appropriately majestic and uplifting when it was played nice and loud. But these were too few and far apart.
Ultimately the film’s failure to fully satisfy lied in its narrative style. The flow as it was delivered, felt incoherent, often jumping from seemingly unrelated scenes to another with dialouge that is difficult to follow. Nothing was shown of Berstein’s early childhood life. When we first see him in the flashback, he was already 25 years old where he gets his big break by conducting his first performance to replace the original conductor who was sick. At that time, it would appear he was already fully equipped with the talents that would catapult him to fame. Subsequently the film provides glimpses of his work but instead of providing more insight to his genius, it chose to focus mainly on his relation with his lover Felicia (played by Carey Mulligan) whom he later marries and have three children with. Even this romantic aspect of the film was rather unromantic. Carey Mulligan is a brilliant actress but I just did not feel that much chemistry between her and Bradley. The portrayal of Felicia also seemed held back as her swings in her up and down relationship with Berstein were not fully vindicated. I also felt that the multiple scenes of her struggles with illness at the end redundant. These were uncomfortable to watch and added no value to the story apart from unnecessarily making the length of the movie exceed 2 hours.
Bradley Cooper is without doubt one of the most talented person in Hollywood today. But with Maestro, he had perhaps miscalculated his approach. He obviously put in his mind and soul to the project as evident by his powerful performance looking and behaving like the real deal. But at the end of the day, the enigmatic life and craft of Berstein still remains very much a mystery. Like Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, we are expected to accept the main character’s genius as if they were born with it. Some enlightenment on how he got started on the right path in his early years would have provided some level of justification to his skills and source of inspiration. This is definitely not in the same level as A Star is Born. Watchable but dull.