Maestro (R, 2023)

I actually saw Best Picture nominee #8 back in January, before the nominations even came out—it was on plenty of prediction lists, and I wanted to get a head start. I did the same with Rustin and May December. But while I reviewed those other films not long after I saw them, I kept putting off this one in favor of the latest movies I’d watched. As you can probably guess, that tracks with how I’d rate Maestro compared to some of the other movies on this list.

Biopic of Leonard Bernstein, following the course of his career and family life across more than three decades. We watch Lenny as he conducts and composes, his work taking him from New York to Hollywood, and we ride the ups and downs of his marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre.

I’ve seen four biopics this Oscar season. Rustin and Nyad take the approach of focusing mainly on a very specific period of the subject’s life. Oppenheimer uses its nonlinear structure to have pivotal events earlier and later in the subject’s life resonate with one another. Maestro is probably the “straightest” biopic of the four—not that Bernstein was straight!—in that it covers a huge swathe of the subject’s life in a relatively straightforward manner, following events as they happen.

As such, we get very familiar beats here. Lenny has an early brush with success. He meets Felicia at a party. He composes Broadway scores, then film scores. He and Felicia have a happy marriage and an intimate understanding of one another. He conducts for prestigious orchestras. He has a number of indiscreet affairs, fracturing his family. And so on.

I’ll be honest, not much of it grabbed me. Probably the most interesting part of the film is the relationship between Lenny and Felicia. In a way, the film reminds me a bit of Bohemian Rhapsody—it definitely doesn’t straightwash Lenny, but it does downplay the importance of his queerness by focusing so much on his relationship with a woman. All that said, however, I think the film does a good job of showing Lenny and Felicia as something akin to platonic soulmates. Even though they both know their marriage isn’t built on sexual or romantic attraction, they still mean a great deal to each other. And as Lenny’s careless actions put a strain on the outward parts of their relationship, there’s still something between them that can’t be entirely broken.

I get that this was a certified Bradley Cooper production, and he pulls quadruple duty as the director, co-writer, star, and producer—in addition to the Best Picture nod, he’s also nominated for his acting and original screenplay. For me, while his acting is good, I didn’t find it remarkable, not worth the controversy he courted for donning that prosthetic nose. Carey Mulligan is also nominated, for Leading Actress, for her performance as Felicia. There have been a lot of actresses over the years who’ve been nominated for Playing the Wife of the Guy the Movie is About, and in Mulligan’s case, I think Felicia warrants the leading category over supporting. While the film is definitely about Lenny, Felicia gets enough of her own focus and perspective to be worth Mulligan’s time. The film also features appearances from Matt Bomer, Sarah Silverman, and Maya Hawke.

Warnings

Language, drinking/smoking/brief drug use, sexual references, and thematic elements.