Maestro

The 2023 Netflix biopic, Maestro, is a quintessential example of the follies surrounding the Academy Awards and how movies try to appease them. Throughout its almost century long lifespan, the Oscars have created a stereotype of movie that many can pick up on, with them often involving ‘’important topics’’ usually told in a sappy but still grounded manner, contain star power that tries to ‘’reinvent themselves’’ through a physical or emotional transformation, and portray something that appeals to classic Hollywood and the voting body like a war drama, historical biopic, or even something about themselves (Hollywood adores being proclaimed as glorious). Maestro ticks most of these boxes and from early chatter, seemed to have won favor, but after it failed to win any major categories, and the negative reception proved to be more than just bitter casuals who couldn’t appreciate ”art”, it couldn’t be denied anymore that people were tired of these movies.

Leonard Bernstein (played by Bradley Cooper) gets his big break after being asked to conduct a fully broadcasted orchestra after his superior falls ill, which earns him a glowing reception and recognition. Now on top of the world, Bernstein eventually meets aspiring actress Felicia Montealegre (played by Carrey Mulligan) and starts an intermittent relationship with her despite Bernstein himself being overtly gay, which causes strife for his current male fling, clarinetist David Oppenheim (played by Matt Bomer). As his career progresses yet his affairs and ego continue to cause issues for both his wife and children, a threshold will need to be overstepped in order for this relationship to work out.

While the movie is technically sound, Maestro feels like such a soulless film that only has interest in getting award buzz rather than appealing to audience members (which is hilarious considering it didn’t win anything big on the night). With uninteresting direction, bland characters with uneven performances, hollow visuals and music, and a truly garbage screenplay, it does a disservice to the person it’s supposed to be serenading.

As would be expected for a film that was heavily featured at the Oscars, Maestro sets itself up to appeal to the voting body by portraying the life of a highly regarded composer through a mostly realistic yet still ‘’important’’ lens, with the initial trailers already causing people to become skeptical of its true intent. It becomes even more apparent when you look at those involved, and how many recognizable names were backing it, with Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese (who were in talks to direct the film previously) acting as producers, having former Oscar-winning screenwriter, Josh Singer, help write the screenplay, and allowing former Academy Award nominee, Bradley Cooper, to essentially take over the picture in every possible way for his own purposes. Being the film’s director, writer, producer, and main star, most of this movie feels like a desperate attempt by Cooper to get an Oscar in whatever category he can squeeze into, which comes across as pretty irresponsible and results in a very messy flick. While he appears to have respect for Bernstein and did extensive research in order to portray the film accordingly (even learning how to conduct an orchestra over the course of six years), none of this merit comes through in the film, which does more harm to its main focus than good.

Nothing about this story highlights Bernstein’s accomplishments as a musician, instead choosing to focus on his relationship status (which is also not very interesting), brushing aside his musical feats in quick passing sentences. There’s no insight into who he was as a person, what drove him to create such iconic musical pieces like for West Side Story, and how his style and sound made such an impact on American music at the time. The script by Cooper and Singer is so poor and does such a bad job showcasing his life, that it actively retracts from the experience and makes him come across as very one-note, unimpressive and actively unlikeable. It feels like a testing ground for Cooper as a filmmaker, especially in regard to the scripting and the direction, as none of these components have any element of flair, creativity or even spontaneity to make it feel alive and unique, coming across as dull, basic, and incredibly un-connectable. There’s no experimentation with the direction, the film isn’t in-depth or gripping enough to distract away from its bland presentation, the visuals seem hollow and without meaning outside of flavor text, and you can feel a lack of experience behind the directing chair from Cooper, who has an idea of how to present these stories, but doesn’t have the ingredient or know-how to make it come to life.

Bradley Cooper choosing to populate the major behind-the-scenes roles is already overstretching his reach, but placing himself in the leading role with distractingly obvious facial make-up and an accent that just borders on cartoonish, properly cemented his push for Academy adoration, and it doesn’t come off that much more disingenuous when you watch him. The bizarre thing about this movie about Leonard Bernstein is that despite what the obvious conclusion would be, he isn’t the lead, with that honour going to his wife, Felicia, with Carrey Mulligan even getting top billing. While this is a nice sentiment from Cooper (and considering he’s doing so many other things, he won’t go without his fair share of money), it doesn’t seem like a choice that makes much sense, as Felicia suffers the same problem as Bernstein does, in that both are very boring people to be around. From a purely acting standpoint, both Cooper and Mulligan are pretty good and get across at least a hint of personality, yet the writing and direction is all over the place and never allows them to feel like real people or even characters, they only feel like actors reciting lines.

Their chemistry is limited to them just talking over one another throughout every exchange, the movie doesn’t do anything to explore their lives outside of this relationship, and since their romance is so bland and features nothing that shocking as a narrative crux, it isn’t that engaging or intriguing to watch their dips and dives. Most of the supporting cast isn’t allowed to bring anything to the picture either, with none of them getting enough screen time or purpose to provide anything more than literal background noise. Matt Bomer (despite being one of the top billers) is only featured in a few scenes in the beginning, and despite coming across as charming when with Cooper (with the two actually sharing more believable and genuine chemistry than him and Mulligan), nothing ever really comes from that relationship, so it feels pretty pointless. Sarah Silverman and Maya Hawk are fine enough as extended family members, but they aren’t allowed to inject their own thoughts into the situation or be active participants, they just exist to say lines and not much else.

For a movie that clearly wants to have a very distinguish and fancy visual design, with the black and white filter, polished camera work and music that’s literally just Bernstein’s previous work, it’s a shame that it comes across as so unimpressive and wasted. It’s not that these qualities are poor on their own, but their usage feels so useless and hollow that it feels surface level. The cinematography by Matthew Libatique (who worked on movies like Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, and Mother!) isn’t bad and if it viewed without context, would be seen as very clean, polished, and even slightly artistic, but its usage is purely for show, as none of these shots are used well, give the film a visual language or even provide any sense of unique depth or engagement. There’s a lot of static shots kept far away from the people of focus, blocking what’s supposed to be the proper subject with various clutter in the foreground or vast environments that aren’t made to look very nice.

The angles are bland and kept at a medium level, the black and white filter is poorly shown off and doesn’t add anything to the film outside of ”stylistic points”, the transition into color is so lazy and sporadic that it doesn’t even register when it happens, and outside of a single shot where Mulligan is literally in the shadow of Bernstein while he’s conducting, there are no shots that are memorable or visually interesting in a way that a story like this could’ve used, especially because the film is strangely lacking in conducting scenes. Whenever the film showcases the music, it is done with enough energy and composure to feel genuine, but they are shot so generically and are so unmemorable that it’s honestly astounding how much this movie doesn’t want to be about music. The score is just pieces that were created by Bernstein in the past, and with proper tooling, could’ve added an old-fashioned component to the movie that would’ve given it a distinct identity, yet there is no thought put into this element as they are just haphazardly tossed into random scenes to back up a moment even when unrequired.

Maestro didn’t want to be a movie that appealed to audiences, its sole purpose was to tick every box needed to make the Academy fall in love with it and shower it with nominations, but in spite of several undeserved nominations, it didn’t win anything major, so it couldn’t even fool them. It is a shame if Cooper actively wanted to deliver this true story about a meaningful figure in modern music with care, tenderness and respect, because it never feels like that when watching and instead paints this individual as someone who openly cheated on his wife for no good reason, is apparently blind to how much harm he’s doing to her in spite of his obvious ego, affairs and drug taking, and is praised as one of the greatest conductors of all time despite only being seen doing so a total of two times in the entire movie (and one of those moments was cut short). While the performances are good enough and the film is produced and constructed soundly, there is so little to gain from this film due to how poorly it is written, directed and visually put together, only serving as a tool for what to bring to a movie if you want audiences to hate you, but secure at least several Oscar nominations.  Very little pomp and circumstance surrounding this display of ‘’musical’’ talent, this film never crescendos to a point that is worthy of adoration.