Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s film review

Bradley Cooper it’s a romantic patented. He had already provided an interesting proof of this sensitivity in his directorial debut, A Star Is Born (the magnificent 2018 remake of A star was born), an old-fashioned blockbuster filmed with an elegant and modern technique. Further confirmation comes with Cooper’s second directorial effort, Mastera biopic loosely based on the life of the composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein and his wife, the actress Felicia Montealegre. The film, which premiered at the Venice Film Festivalis a swirling love poemat the same time overwhelming and bitterly melancholic. As often happens with passion, however, the film also results confused.

Cooper, who plays Bernstein wearing prosthesis which have been the subject of controversy, has opted for an even more elevated style than A Star Is Born. The first half of the film, as Cooper quickly traces Bernstein’s rise to fame and then more deliberately renders the scenes in which Bernstein and Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) fall in love between a theater with ghostly lights and the rolling hills of the Berkshire Mountains, is shot in black and white in a square format. The two meet for the first time at a party full of smoke and song and immediately fall in love with each other’s intelligence and directness, with the propensity of both to feel and desire in front of each other. These artists, coming from well-to-do backgrounds, were not at all tormented by the rigor and austerity of the 1950s, which would deny their ambitions. They are people creative And activeattracted by the same flame. And so, together, they burn – for a while, in a good way.

Cooper, who co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Singermakes the years flow quickly in a succession of scenes: children who are born, professional careers that reach ever higher peaks. Master interrupts its incessant movement only for small moments intended to define the dynamics of a relation, not to trace important milestones on a known timeline. It’s nice that Master not be a boring biopic, structured in a slow way, which briefly describes Bernstein’s life in its most pertinent moments. If I haven’t counted wrong, West Side Story it is mentioned only twice; candid maybe less. From time to time we see the great man at work on the podium, in immense moments of tiring physicality that Cooper tackles vigorously with enthusiasm. Otherwise, however, this is not a film about career or creativity: which perhaps will disappoint those who would like to see diligently depicted the salient facts in the life of a US artist of crucial importance, while lovers of romantic melodrama should be more satisfied.

In all of this, Bernstein (his extraordinarily important presence in the world and his effect on the world) is evoked above all through the music – the one he wrote as well as the one he beautifully directed. How wonderful are the selected pieces: the violent tension of the execution of the Symphony of the Resurrection by Mahler in Ely Cathedral; the nimble audacity of Fancy Freewith the first summons of the dance challenges of West Side; the quick movements and brisk pace of A Quiet Place. Cooper relies heavily on these tunes to convey a meaning. And why shouldn’t it, given that I am the testimony of the production of a prodigy, of his original inventiveness and his extraordinary ear in interpreting the classics of yesteryear? Particularly striking is the long sequence in which Bernstein furiously directs the Mahler Symphony (an artist in old age who rediscovers the fire that burns inside him), skilfully linked, in the narration of the film, to the rekindling of flame of his marriage.

Depending on your point of view, the union between Bernstein and Montealegre was bizarre or progressive. Bernstein had many affairs with men, a fact the film (while staying true to its mission to depict a deep and enduring heterosexual marriage) does not gloss over. No explanatory statements are ever made, nor are labels assigned. But the question of sexuality of Bernstein, and his growing indiscretion about it, is openly discussed quite often as the film reaches its climax, which at that point takes place in the sumptuous color photography of Matthew Libatique. Cooper continues flirting of Bernstein with men (in some cases, real sentimental relationships) the reason that threatens to definitively separate Bernstein and Montealegre. We’ll probably never know for sure if that’s exactly what happened in real life. In Masterhowever, is presented as a fact: a thesis that perhaps seems too easy and explicit an analysis, in the light of the abstraction and nuances dedicated to the couple in the rest of the film.

While facing the queerness directly, Master curiously silent on thepolitical activism of Bernstein and (perhaps above all) of Montealegre. Of the famous receipt in favor of Black Panthers which Montealegre held in the Bernsteins’ apartment in 1970, and which he brought the writer Tom Wolfe to coin the contemptuous expression «radical chic», not the slightest mention is made in the film. Nor about the couple’s other noble causes. One gets the unwelcome impression that Cooper wants to keep the film free of complications of this kind, lest they too rigidly define and contextualize these two lovers who are so fiercely vying for our sympathy.

The omissions and selective inclusions of Masterits swinging between epic love story And artist impressionist portrait, make it difficult to fully enjoy the film. Despite so much beautiful music and images that flow around it, the unpredictable temper of Bernstein (the melancholy fugues and stubborn ego, the generosity of soul and spirit, the brilliant production of his mind) is more declared than perceived. We are briefly told the story of a marriage and even more vaguely the path of a artist, but neither are fully developed as one would expect from a film so exuberant and invested with such ardor. Cooper, a lifelong admirer of Bernstein who did a lot of research and then extracted what he thought was the salient parts of the story, can’t stay focused enough on one task. He is torn between high-sounding hagiography And marital picture with its lights and its shadows: an indecision that dampens the film’s potential impact.

To clarify and elevate the film, therefore, are the two main interpretations, grandiose and disruptive. Both Cooper and Mulligan work hard with vocal affection, do superbly with makeup and virtually smoke cigarette after cigarette throughout the film. You find wit and finesse in each characterization (the way Cooper deftly illustrates the clouds that pass over Bernstein’s psyche, Mulligan’s careful calibration of sophisticated courage and betrayed vulnerability) but also the grandeur of the performances, the their garrulous grandeur as they embody legendary figures living vibrant lives. There will undoubtedly be those who will find all this excessivetoo mannered, sliced And theatrical. But, hopefully, an even greater number of spectators will be thrilled by this difficult test of two actors so dedicated and enslaved to the feverish project of Master.

Although there are many scenes of Master to have their specific strength, full of insight and remarkable artistic quality, it is only by recognizing the full-bodied work of Mulligan and Cooper that the whole finds resonance. In them lies the truth grandeur of the film: its best and most convincing approximation of what it means love And create and, in doing so, reveal something sublime.