“Maestro” Review: Masterful Manipulation

Maestro tricks viewers into thinking they know the master. In reality, supplementary reading is required.

After having watched Maestro, Leonard Bernstein, to my knowledge, was an enigmatic, overly loving and dangerously loveable once in a generation talent that pioneered American composing and never faltered in his artistic pursuits. A questionable husband, my version of Bernstein could be anywhere on the range of fidelity, and I would never have a clue. Maestro is much like its own conductor in that way. Bernstein matches Cooper in his overambition, and both artists seem to have suffered from their own imagination. Ballooning the composer's life into vignettes of hokey wisdom and stunning visual glamor, the confused pacing makes for a biopic where supplementary reading is required for proper understanding. After more than two hours with the man, I still feel as though Leonard Bernstein is a complete stranger. 

We begin with the cinematography, and Cooper’s ambition, both operating in full force. The young Bernstein gets a call in a black and white New York loft. The camera stays in wide for the entirety of the conversation, Bernstein silhouetted and off centered in the lower right corner. It’s a knowing restraint that Cooper practices to great effect throughout the film to contrast the equally impressive cinematic opulence. Which, we get our first taste of as the composer springs to life, lets in the light, and swerves into a giddy sprint with an energy that proves contagious for the rest of the film. The camera whips and tilts to above ceiling level as Bernstein sprints headstrong through his own excitement. Suddenly, we’re in a palace of stage, the camera flies through the space before landing on the glowing Bernstein, who by now, has a smile that matches the audience’s. 

A powerful beginning to what reveals itself to be a shocking slog of a first half. While the opening scene demonstrates the film’s breathtaking and thematically effective cinematography as well as Cooper’s performance that wraps the movie in its own passion, it just as much demonstrates where the film tends to lack. As Bernstein takes the stage for his debut performance, he breathes in, stares at the orchestra, and–

Applause. Close on a smiling Bernstein, schnoz and all. The performance is over, and apparently, it was amazing. At least, I have to believe it was, because the movie told me instead of showing it. That was my exact thought process for the majority of the film. With all of its inspired transitions and fancy tricks of the camera, Maestro at times feels like it is skipping through a flipbook of Bernstein’s lifelong performance instead of showing us backstage. With a narrative velocity amplified by the film's effortlessly breezy cinematography, Maestro doesn’t dabble in details as much as generalities. The frame melting from Bernstein expressing genuine love for Felicia, played brilliantly by Carey Mulligan, into his onstage excitement makes for visual flare, but speeds past the moments of brevity that allow for compelling character and thematic development. By this, the film works in vignettes; small episodes of Bernstein’s life that only show the aftermath of anything resembling choice, chance, or conflict, replaced instead by nuggets of “artistic wisdom” that makes the film feel like it was meant for a trailer where its characters can speak in quotes to their heart's content. In this way, the film feels like it is attempting a grandiose statement about life, love and art, but only manages to create a movie that is all too eager to sacrifice narrative cohesion for dazzling the audience and imparting half-baked themes.

While Mulligan and Cooper do provide some of the year's best performances by manifesting these two tumultuous artists eagerness and zest for life, even they sometimes struggle to deliver such hokey lines with impactful sincerity. And while the actor’s chemistry makes this couple feel alive, we rarely sit with either in the film’s first forty minutes, Bernstein’s personality was simply too much for a moment of respite. This should be, and will eventually, become a source of conflict in the two’s perfect lives, but only after about forty minutes to an hour of a bus tour equivalent of the musician and actresses lives. Without the tension, the conflict, the meaningful moments of calm after the storm, this relationship hardly feels real, its constituents hardly unique. After all, Bernstein is obsessed with the music, he lives for it…just like every other biopic protagonist. 

And when a narrative in a far too fast film is also one that has been popularly told in recent years, well, it’s lucky Maestro manages its visuals and performances with such grace. Else, I would be tempted to place this biopic in the same herd as the rest, but instead, Maestro stands out for its truly brilliant visual effectiveness, and truly confusing narrative falters. I hardly remember what happened in Maestro because it all felt the same. Hardly were Bernstein and Felicia challenged as character’s for the film’s first half, and as such, my notes while watching the movie have a distinct change in tone at the hour long mark. “The movie finally feels like it’s starting” is not a note you want to write after watching an hour of a man’s life that, apparently, was all peaches and cream, until it all wasn’t. The film is painfully subtle at all the wrong times in the details of Bernstein’s life, and yet overt in its binary “good” and “bad” segments. The first half of the film is a breeze for Bernstein, while the second is relentless in its repetition. At the same time, Maestro chooses to skip over portions of the musician’s life that seem crucial. I only know this because I entered the film having known nothing about the composer going in, knowing slightly more coming out, and learning what I was taught by the film was but a fragment of the man’s life. Apparently he was politically contentious and had multiple artistic failures, but Maestro would rather focus on feeling than fact. Its swift, stylish transitions from different decades of the master's life demonstrate a preference for visual grandeur over narrative detail.  As a giddy audience member, I can enjoy this prioritization. Maestro certainly feels grandiose in its subject, important in its themes, and whimsical with its scale. But as someone curious about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro fails at what feels like would have been its primary focus as a biopic. Instead, Cooper conducted his masterwork into a cinematic symphony that certainly sounds impressive, but beyond the initial shock, at times sink into white noise.