I have been known to be a bit negative about the old Oscars on occasion in the past, suggesting that they don't actually reward merit, but adherence to a somewhat inflexible set of quasi-political, self-regarding criteria. Comedies and genre movies may as well not exist, most years, as far as the actual winners' list is concerned – the way the Academy scrambled to introduce the Best Animated Feature category in 2002, seemingly just to prevent Shrek from winning the Best Picture prize, should tell you everything you need to know about the Academy and its outlook.

Nevertheless, while the best films may not always win the awards, that doesn't stop people from hoping and dreaming and even occasionally making high quality, imaginative movies in the hope that they may catch the voters off-guard and actually win one of those cute little gold statuettes. So the existence of AMPAS, and the prestige attached to winning an Academy Award, is probably a stimulus to the production of better movies, regardless of whether the right films get the nod or not. The downside of this is that film-makers with an eye on a gong sometimes end up coming out with the proverbial 'Oscar bait' film, possibly made with the aid of a tick-list, with all the sense of crushingly worthy dullness that suggests.

My suspicion was that Bradley Cooper's Maestro was going to be classic Oscar bait, which didn't exactly predispose me to enjoy it – plus there is the fact that this is one of those prestige Netflix films which played in certain cinemas for about a week simply to ensure its eligibility for the fruits of awards season (another regular grumble of mine around this time of year).

This is a film which has been in the works for a bit with several different names attached – at one point Martin Scorsese was going to do it, then it was passed over to Steven Spielberg. Both of them are still involved as producers – if nothing else, it packs a wallop in terms of its personnel – with Spielberg eventually offering the film on to Cooper as co-writer, lead actor, co-producer and director.

Cooper plays Leonard Bernstein, the renowned conductor and composer famous for writing the musical West Side Story, the opera Candide, and the ballet Dybbuk, amongst many other achievements, and also for frequently being mistaken for the guy who composed the score for The Magnificent Seven, who was a different Bernstein entirely. The movie skips over Bernstein's younger years entirely, starting with the 25-year-old Bernstein being called upon to conduct the New York Harmonic at very short notice and without rehearsal when the guest conductor goes down with the flu. From this point on success builds upon success as Bernstein is seemingly successful at everything he turns his hand to.

He also finds romantic happiness, in the form of a relationship with actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), whom he eventually marries after a long courtship – Montealegre rather selflessly undertaking to ignore a string of relationships between Bernstein and other men. But as the years pass it proves increasingly difficult to keep this promise.

Thus Maestro turns out to be another take on the eternal theme of the extent to which it is possible to distinguish between flawed human beings and the extraordinary art that they create. The film arguably isn't entirely even-handed when dealing with this topic, as it's stuffed with Bernstein's music – there are excerpts from his work, both diegetically and on the soundtrack (this is a case of the subject of a bio-pic getting a credit on the movie), as well as major sequences in which Bradley Cooper comes out and conducts an orchestra – while his less admirable activities mostly occur off-screen and are not exactly dwelt upon. One might even go so far as to suggest that the film's decision to handle Bernstein's bisexuality so delicately results in his being given an easy ride – had he been a serial womaniser and adulterer it's hard to imagine punches being pulled the way they are.

On the other hand, the Bernstein family were involved in the making of the film so we must assume they are happy with it, and with the depiction of Felicia's choice to forgive Bernstein his various infidelities. In the end this is much more a film showing selections from the life of a great artist rather than a warts-and-all attempt to show him in the round, as it were.

And as such it's quite commendable and often very interesting, particularly in its early stages – not entirely unlike Poor Things, the film starts off primarily in black and white before switching to colour after a bit, but this is presumably intended to reflect the changing period of the film (as colour movies and TV shows become more dominant, so the film changes to copy them). There are still some bold directorial choices; the film adopts an almost impressionistic, non-natural style early on, with one sequence depicting Bernstein as an actual performer in On the Town; it seems on the verge of turning into an actual musical for a while. The shift to a more conventional style is carefully handled, but this is still a bolder and more experimental film than one might have expected, given how down-the-line A Star is Born was.

Which I suppose must mean that Bradley Cooper is improving as a director, something it's hard to see as an actual negative. It's also hard to argue with the notion that he's turned into one of the leading actors of his generation, too – uplifted mustelids, bisexual legends of the musical establishment, hobbit love-interests, he can genuinely do them all. He's certainly very impressive here – I'm not sure the performance quite merits the 'Bradley Cooper exposes and exerts his soul' line that one legitimate critic was putting about a short while ago, but it's absolutely the sort of thing that attracts attention, fake nose or not. (We're not going to go there, folks.)

On the other hand, Cooper isn't even top billed amongst the performers – that place goes to Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre (the name is due to her Chilean heritage, and no, we're not going to go there, either). You could certainly argue that Mulligan is the greatest actress of her generation never to appear in a superhero movie – quite apart from the portrayal of the character, she also manages to age thirty years completely convincingly (with the aid of more subtle make-up than Cooper's schnozz). It's another fully rounded performance.

Let's not worry about Maestro's awards chances too much, though – it's a quality movie, made with intelligence and skill, and not afraid to be a bit bolder than you might expect. We thought it was a worthwhile couple of hours, with a lot to enjoy and appreciate, even if we were watching it on the smaller type of screen. Feathers for the caps of Cooper and Mulligan, certainly.

Awix

05.02.24 Front Page

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