Movie: Maestro
Running Times: 2:09 (I would have cut at least 12 minutes)
Nominated for: Best Picture, Actress, Cinematography, Hair and Make Up, Sound
How I watched: Netflix
When it had me: First Black and White shot
When it lost me: Third Act
What systems does it challenge: Traditional marriage? Celebrity
Every year there is a biopic and every year I groan. I find biopics awkward and unsatisfying. It always feels like a vehicle for a star to wow us with their likeness or their ability to disappear into their real life counterpart. I think actors love to do it but it rarely makes a good film.
So Maestro blew me away because it felt very different. From the first black and white shot I sat up and took notice. I couldn't quite tell what I was looking at in that first shot as Leonard Bernstein gets the call that he will get to conduct. The lighting is gorgeous and the framing is mysterious. My eyes were engaged and I had questions. Director Bradley Cooper came to play. That shot transitions into dynamic movement and we magically transport through the halls and down to the hall. I felt swept off my feet and surprised. It happens a few times.
Maestro is shot on film using both Black and White and Color. I didn't feel like every shot in the film was cinematic glory but it happened often enough that I was duly impressed from a relatively new director.
The story that encompasses so many eras in his life, actually revolves around the tension of a beautiful partnership with a wife who tries to share him with not only the world, as is common with performers and celebrities, but also with his many sanctioned affairs.
The movie becomes more about his wife Felicia, as it is her arc that drives it. Cooper's Lenny is who he is for the most part; dynamic, lively, distractable, joyous and creative. Felicia who wholly accepts her husband as a bisexual man has no desire to own him and cut him off from the other half of his attractions in the world. She endeavors to allow his full embrace of living and loving and then shoulder the burden of the difficulties that arise.
I was blown away by the beauty and the folly of such a generous position for a soul mate to take. The progressive and pioneering sort of person who can say confidently that they don't need a cookie cutter existence and they don't care what the Joneses are doing. I was equally swept off my feet by her gorgeous love as I was by some of Cooper's transitions.
Ultimately, I was kind of devastated by the fact that the arrangement, perhaps inevitably, favored one spouse over the other and led to some deeply sad outcomes. The movie haunted me. I spent a couple of days just thinking about Felicia Bernstein and how incredible she was.
Maestro completely engaged me in a way that is unusual in this genre. What a delightful surprise! I've been feeling kind of bad for Bradley because it feels like no one is talking about this movie or giving it any buzz for any of the awards but his second film got five nominations so, I guess he'll be ok.
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