Where I Watched It: Netflix

English Audio Description provided By: international Digital Center

Written By: Liz Gutman

Narrated By: Jamie Lemcheck

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Sarah Silverman, and Maya hawk.

Written By: Written By: Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer

Directed By: Bradley Cooper

The nose. Everyone had an opinion on the nose. Well, good news Mr. Cooper, you’ve landed yourself a blind film critic, and I’m not judging your makeup team here. This is about whether or not Bradley Cooper has anything to say as a filmmaker, and I think he does.

Usually, because I don’t get advance screeners, everyone else has already had an opinion on the things I then have to review. It doesn’t weigh on me. I constantly give movies grades atypical of other critics. but the one thing I kept hearing from those who didn’t like Maestro is how they thought it felt just like another biopic, and I couldn’t disagree more.

Bradley Cooper has chosen to tell the story of Leonard Bernstein not as your typical biopic anyway, where it focuses only on the most well renowned member of the family. A better comparison would be the film Walk The Line, which even though it spends a great deal of time on the portrayal of Johnny Cash, also has to give June carter Cash her due as well since she was such a big part of his life, and an artist in her own right.

Here, Cooper takes it a step further, and attempts to tell a love story instead of a biopic. Why not? He did so well with A Star Is Born, maybe human connection is his strong suit. So, while we do start the film with Bernstein, it is an older version of him reflecting on what once was. We start at a random moment in his life, when Bernstein has the opportunity to professionally conduct, and this is also where we see Bernstein in his first relationship, which establishes the dancer played heartbreakingly with little screen time by Matt Bomer.

When Felicia walks into Leonard’s life, it’s almost too quick. It’s a love at first sight approach, that two people can become so quickly inseparable, or drawn together. How rapidly Leonard is able to move out of his same-sex partnership into one with Felicia leaves Bomer’s character deeply lost and confused, but quiet during a time when open relationships like theirs were nearly non-existent.

from here, once Cooper has Leonard and Felicia together, he seems to wander through their relationship by choosing those other moments. It’s the moments the biopics typically leave out, because they are busy with flashbacks, or trying to show that a character is filling a void left by the lack of love of a parent, or exploring some other trauma. There are all of the moments we could have had, with Bernstein working with any number of lookalikes as the celebrities he met over the years, and we’re basically limited to a brief mention of Aaron Copeland. No red carpets or galas, no awards acceptance speech. Just conversations between Leonard and Felicia, advancing time, and aging both as the film grows. they have a family, the kids grow up, and the film never really feels like a celebration of the life and work of just Leonard Bernstein, but something far more normal and richer. It’s that for richer or poorer, until death do us part that fuels maestro towards its chosen end, and that’s why Felicia feels so much like a lead. It’s not a loud performance from carey Mulligan, but it’s the feeling that somehow, this film was a love letter to Felicia, not Leonard.

The movie may begin with Leonard, but it ends because Felicia ends. Not because Leonard ends, but because the relationship Cooper spent two hours building, growing, and solidifying has turned in a somber direction, and there’s no coda to this opus. Felicia died in 1976, and Leonard would go on to live another 14 years past that. Cooper isn’t interested in those 14 years, because Felicia isn’t a part of them.

To write this off as a typical biopic misses cooper’s mark by a mile. He picks the mundane conversations more often than not. For a genre that has been twice parodied in Walk Hard and Weird, there is a clear formula for that biopic that these critics are dismissive of, and I don’t think Cooper follows that mold at all. He also almost entirely abandons his supporting cast, and really aside for some light screen time for Matt bomer, everyone who is not Leonard or Felicia never truly comes into focus. They briefly appear, but they come and go.

Cooper’s performance is transformative physically, but he’s also altered his voice. Being a blind film critic, and not being affected by all the work the makeup team has done (which I’ve heard is excellent, and he looks nothing like himself), I judged his voice. 97% of what he said felt like Bernstein. He had a very obvious voice, and it was only occasionally on certain words that he would slip into his Bradley Cooper voice, and you could then hear him. It’s still incredibly impressive to disappear like that. Mulligan on the other hand, doesn’t rely on an accent, but the delicacy of her performance. Often, Felicia succeeds in the quieter contemplative moments, which are not moments typically given Oscars. In some ways, Felicia even starts as a voyeur vessel for the audience, introducing us to this legendary musician, and his world. They may be in a love story, but he’s still more renown than she.

What i wish from this audio description, is something I’ve been quietly starting to hint at in some other specific reviews. there are directors out there making choices, and I do believe it is possible to convey those choices in the description. Cooper plays with using black and white, as well as aspect ratio changes. NoThere’s a lot of intentionality in his direction, as he is clearly trying to be taken seriously as a director. He already has acclaim for his acting, but he really wants that approval from his director peers, and having both Steven Spielberg and martin Scorsese as producers on the project, he is trying different things, and like some of these other directors who make specific choices, I’d like to hear more about them in the description. I referenced this recently in my review of Priscilla, where Elvis often isn’t directly in frame, or is even out of focus, because Sofia Coppola is focused on Priscilla. It’s a choice she makes, yet the narration almost makes it feel like Elvis and Priscilla are equal in their scenes, and that he is very visible.

The last thing I have to say, because it just must be said, is that cooper won me over with his rendition of Make Our Garden Grow, which he wrote for the musical Candide. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more lush sounding performance that rattled my screen than the money he spent to make that a reality. when you have the budget, I’m assuming the best musicians and singers were brought together for that. it was truly amazing, and i don’t know what award it needs to win, but that was a truly incredible moment.

So my grade isn’t perfect. While I did enjoy what Cooper was going for, there’s something to be said for that many of those inconsequential conversations just aren’t cinematic. And while cooper tries his best, and the actors are fantastic, there are some moments that feel so mundane that you almost wish he had chosen a typical biopic moment instead. They are fleeting, and the choices Cooper makes almost make this a perfect film. It isn’t very long, and certainly doesn’t overstay its welcome, and while it seems not to celebrate the life of Bernstein, there’s no doubt whose music is playing throughout.

Final Grade: A-