This is one of the weakest movies I have seen in quite a while. It exhibits the worst faults of a biopic, with none of the compensatory pleasures. It contributes nothing to our understanding of the challenges faced by successful, celebrated people, instead trotting out clichés that go back at least as far as the 1940s. Career-obsessed husband, long-suffering wife, wealth,jealousy. We can safely feel superior, in this day and age in societies likely to screen this movie, that Bernstein's bisexuality can be addressed. In fact, it's pretty much the only thing that's addressed in Maestro. The trajectory of Carey Mulligan's Felicia Montealegre (Mrs Bernstein) is one of acceptance to rejection to acquiescence which, however reactionary that may be politically, at least gives this otherwise spineless piece of work a little spine, and enables me to give the movie one star for Ms Mulligan's performance.. I should really award another for make-up maven Kazu Hiro's remarkable work in transforming Mr Cooper face, but the realism in that department didn't spill over into the performance as a whole. Here, as in A Star Is Born, Mr Cooper is attracted to characters with gravitas, but he isn't able to convey that quality at all. We watched the remarkable Michael Fassbender in a movie the other night: he is someone who is what Orson Welles called 'a king actor'. Bradley Cooper, notwithstanding his many gifts, isn't that.
Nor do his talents seem to extend to writing. He's credited as co-author on this project, so therefore half-responsible for the toe-curling sections of thudding name-drops, the embarrasing lines uttered by almost everyone, and the lack of investigation of Bernstein as a political animal. Tom Wolfe's infamous essay about the Bernsteins hosting a party for the Blank Panthers is noticeable by its absence. Indeed, the environment is spectacularly white. There's a Latino housekeeper who has little to say, an African-American student who Lenny takes a shine to. Of course, the world in which he moved was indeed overwhelmingly white: the point is, he was sensitive to it, aware of it. Omitting this side of him to focus on the domestic is a valid artistic choice, I concede that; but to realise that artistic choice in the behind-every-great-man-is-a-woman trope does no service to anyone involved, including the audience.
Cooper the director makes puzzling and irritating decisions as far as camera positions are concerned. The most puzzling is fliming the climactic confrontation between the Bernsteins in an unchanging two-shot, as if it were a scene in a play. The result is uninvolving, cold. And there are lots of meaningless shots of the countryside, and the huge estate that, naturally, the Bernsteins owned. If you've got it, flaunt it, right? That's the American Way.
Trite, dismal, pretentious. Don't waste your money.
Nor do his talents seem to extend to writing. He's credited as co-author on this project, so therefore half-responsible for the toe-curling sections of thudding name-drops, the embarrasing lines uttered by almost everyone, and the lack of investigation of Bernstein as a political animal. Tom Wolfe's infamous essay about the Bernsteins hosting a party for the Blank Panthers is noticeable by its absence. Indeed, the environment is spectacularly white. There's a Latino housekeeper who has little to say, an African-American student who Lenny takes a shine to. Of course, the world in which he moved was indeed overwhelmingly white: the point is, he was sensitive to it, aware of it. Omitting this side of him to focus on the domestic is a valid artistic choice, I concede that; but to realise that artistic choice in the behind-every-great-man-is-a-woman trope does no service to anyone involved, including the audience.
Cooper the director makes puzzling and irritating decisions as far as camera positions are concerned. The most puzzling is fliming the climactic confrontation between the Bernsteins in an unchanging two-shot, as if it were a scene in a play. The result is uninvolving, cold. And there are lots of meaningless shots of the countryside, and the huge estate that, naturally, the Bernsteins owned. If you've got it, flaunt it, right? That's the American Way.
Trite, dismal, pretentious. Don't waste your money.