Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s second outing behind the digicam, is a gigantic stylistic departure from his first, the 2018 remake of A Star is Born. Nevertheless, what they’ve in frequent (other than depicting the love lives of artists) is that they’re each good movies that come ever so near being nice.

His sophomore effort is concerning the lifetime of Leonard Bernstein, the well-known New York composer and conductor, who Cooper additionally performs. Whereas it traces his inventive journey, the movie’s most important focus is on Bernstein’s marriage to Chilean-Costa Rican actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), from their rocky romance to their household life to Bernstein’s affair with a number of males over time. Maestro begins, nevertheless, with an aged Bernstein trying again on their time collectively after Montealegre’s dying from most cancers, framing the movie’s occasions within the type of reminiscence. 

Maestro is a throwback to Hollywood’s Golden Age

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

Bernstein, although he is thought-about the primary nice American conductor, was additionally the composer behind a pair of landmark movies: Elia Kazan’s On The Waterfront, and Robert Clever and Jerome Robbins’ West Aspect Story (he additionally wrote the music for the unique stage manufacturing). Whereas he was identified extra for theatrical and orchestral work, the lens by which Cooper approaches Bernstein is, understandably, cinematic, between borrowing components of the aforementioned scores, and presenting a major chunk of the film in era-appropriate black and white and a 4:3 side ratio, for the reason that earliest occasions it traces unfolds within the Nineteen Forties.

Nevertheless, Cooper doesn’t simply scrape the floor of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Relatively, he takes inspiration from its tone and classical framing. When Bernstein and Montealegre first meet, they alternate overlapping, rapid-fire quips proper out of a screwball comedy, and whereas Cooper and Mulligan mumble a lot of their energetic dialogue in these scenes, understanding their phrases isn’t practically as necessary as understanding the connection they create.

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

This part of the movie, which charts Bernstein and Montealegre’s early relationship, is exuberant and energetic. The digicam bursts to life and swoops by house throughout each romantic pleasure {and professional} success (two concepts that develop into immediately entwined, portending issues to return). Re-teaming as soon as extra with cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Cooper creates alluring visible tableaus composed of sunshine, shadow, and silhouette, and for a lot of the movie’s prolonged first act, practically each second exudes spellbinding ardour.

Maestro verges on the vivacious formalism of early Hollywood musicals, and at instances, even breaks into summary dance sequences to silently externalize not solely the butterflies of the couple’s courtship however the potential hurdles that lie earlier than them. At one level, whereas displaying Montealegre an early model of his sailor ballet Fancy Free (the eventual foundation for On The City), quite a few dancers fill the stage and, in a dreamlike second, Bernstein is whisked away by the present’s iconic trio of sailors as a dejected Montealegre appears to be like on, understanding that each his work and different queer males will all the time have Bernstein’s consideration.

Bradley Cooper ought to simply direct a musical already 

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

It is a disgrace that Cooper hasn’t made a musical but, as a result of he’s so well-suited to the shape and its dynamic symbolism. Maestro permits him to channel a extra classical filmmaking strategy, one in every of calculated framing and actions that really feel natural once they’re used to punctuate emotional highs — moderately than his free-wheeling, hand-held type on A Star Is Born, which frequently felt scattered, and left even that movie’s strongest performances feeling disconnected from each other.

These black and white segments, which channel each the cinematic verbiage and the dreamlike glitz and glamor of the time, are the place the movie feels most good and pristine, albeit with cracks that slowly start to point out every time Bernstein is round males with whom he’s concerned. The specter of homosexuality threatening a conventional Hollywood star-couple is undoubtedly regressive on its floor, however within the context of the narrative — a cinematic reminiscence as recalled by Bernstein — it’s a retrospective on which features of his life are thought-about acceptable to point out off to the world in operatic phrases, and which elements of him are too subversive for such a factor. There’s by no means a verbal dialog about why Bernstein can’t be seen courting males in public (after all, the time interval is self-explanatory), however there are a number of silent exchanges that elucidate the emotions of betrayal therein.

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

The movie’s Golden Age throwback is completely in step with Bernstein and Montealegre’s prolonged honeymoon section, however with a number of liberties that swimsuit the narrative. Maybe rightly, it omits their damaged engagement throughout this era and the destiny of a relationship Montealegre had within the interim — that’s, till it comes up later within the film throughout an argument when their marriage is much much less amiable. As soon as the movie skips ahead to the late ’50s and early ’60s, it enters its coloration section (whereas nonetheless retaining its square-ish form), and the alluring, previous Hollywood sheen lastly wears off. Sadly, there isn’t a lot by means of related pastiche that Cooper employs from this level on, leaving little room for the form of visible prospers and throwbacks that made its first act sing.

One available, a extra grounded, life like strategy does additionally align with the cracks within the couple’s dynamic being slowly revealed. Nevertheless, Cooper’s subsequent filmmaking choices tends to really feel emotionally noncommittal, even when the actors are placing on an absolute banger of a present.

‘Maestro’s nice performances are imperfectly framed 

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

There are a handful of moments through the coloration scenes the place Cooper makes some beautiful directorial choices that utterly depart from his earlier work. Maybe essentially the most highly effective scene in A Star Is Born options Cooper’s Jack and Woman Gaga’s Ally engaged in a nasty verbal argument within the toilet, throughout which Cooper trains his floating digicam on every of their shut ups, capturing their most uncooked and painful moments with uncomfortable proximity.

Bernstein and Montealegre struggle equally, and each actors’ performances are simply as impassioned, however this time round, Cooper retains the digicam at a distance, capturing each characters in a large, unmoving grasp shot. It’s befitting of a reminiscence from which Bernstein seemingly desires to distance himself, and the atmosphere through which the most important of those arguments takes place additionally informs it in ironic methods (maintain your eye on the close by window for a hearty chortle).

A serious cause this works, nevertheless, is Cooper and Mulligan’s bodily performances. The scene lets their physique language and the define of their kind do all of the speaking. Each actors are totally attuned to their characters’ predicaments and factors of view, and now that the overlap of their dialogue is extra contentious than flirtatious, they’re pressured to carry out a thespian highwire act through which neither Bernstein nor Montealegre desires the opposite to be heard, however each Cooper and Mulligan should be sure that their scene accomplice is. It is fairly a sight to behold, each at a take away — as an train in theatrical efficiency and the cautious alternate of power — and as a dramatic centerpiece of the movie itself.

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

These are the sorts of lived-in performances which might be positive to point out up throughout award season, particularly for the reason that Academy loves showy appearing complimented by bodily transformations. Cooper’s exaggerated faux nostril, blended along with his H. Jon Benjamin-like supply (the voice of Archer and Bob Belcher) offers him a cartoonish, caricatured high quality. The large dimension of the prosthesis leaves his eyes feeling overtly shut collectively, however he interprets this right into a boyish power that feels excellent for the spirited first act, throughout which his mouth tends to hold open in a near-permanent smile.

Nevertheless, what seems to be largely lacking from Maestro — one thing A Star Is Born contained in spades — is the vitality and viscerality of those performances in close-up. That is by no fault of Mulligan’s, and definitely no fault of Cooper’s as an actor, however what he positive factors in dramatic and subtextual readability by using a extra classical directing strategy, he loses in spontaneity. His formalist strategy turns into too inflexible — too proscribing.

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

The rationale A Star Is Born felt so dramatically participating, even when it typically struggled to coherently string a scene collectively, was that it felt laced with explosive unpredictability as if the actors’ most weak moments had been being created (by the actors) and investigated (by the digicam) at precisely the identical time. That is one thing at which Mulligan excels; take, as an example, her efficiency in Paul Dano’s Wildlife, which feels virtually solely strung collectively from moments of deep, intimate thought after Dano had known as “lower,” however the digicam had stored rolling a number of seconds longer. Maestro, however, is a way more segmented movie on this regard.

Excluding the aforementioned argument (and one different unbroken take of Bernstein conducting at size), few scenes really feel as if they’ve been meticulously mined for his or her full dramatic potential. The movie units a excessive bar by opening with Bernstein’s quote from a Harvard lecture in 1976: “A murals doesn’t reply questions, it provokes them; and its important which means is within the rigidity between contradictory solutions.” Nevertheless, little Maestro lives as much as these lofty expectations.

Bernstein’s contradictions within the movie are restricted to his bodily needs, and the digicam hardly ever probes him for deeper problems. Montealegre, equally, is outlined largely by her proximity to Bernstein, and whereas Mulligan makes a meal out of it — she wears the character’s longing and insecurities in each expression and motion — there’s little sense of Montealegre’s perspective both, or of the interior forces that could be pulling her between Bernstein and, effectively… not Bernstein. In what has sadly develop into typical of Cooper’s directing, the image is highly effective however incomplete.  

Credit score: Jason McDonald/Netflix

In comparison with A Star Is Born, the items of Maestro all match neatly collectively, however this comes at a value. The best way Cooper approaches the couple’s reconciliation is visually awe-inspiring — a fluid second of dialogue-free, music-heavy cinematic bliss that builds to a rousing crescendo — however regardless of working as a person scene, it feels largely un-earned within the story’s bigger purview. Chunks of the film really feel lacking, and never simply because it omits a number of key features of the characters’ lives (like relegating Bernstein’s Jewish identification to a couple passing traces, or solely skipping Montealegre’s anti-war activism). Relatively, what it appears to lack is the dramatic rigor that might make its most operatic and emotional moments really feel really cathartic.

Regardless of the tragedies that befall them, an excessive amount of comes too simply to the characters in Maestro — just like the aforementioned reunion — as a result of essentially the most troublesome and agonizing elements of their relationship, and of the actors’ dramatic processes, seem to have been left on the chopping room ground. That’s, in the event that they had been ever conceived of within the first place.

Maestro is now streaming on Netflix.

UPDATE: Nov. 21, 2023, 11:50 a.m. EST Maestro was reviewed out of its world premiere on the Venice Worldwide Movie Competition; this overview has been republished for the movie’s debut on Netflix.