Actor and filmmaker Bradley Cooper confirms with his second feature film, Maestro, if it wasn’t already done, that he is not just another actor with vague directorial aspirations, but a filmmaker of great talent.
In addition to brilliantly playing the lead role, Cooper co-wrote (with Josh Singer, Oscar winner for Spotlight) and directed this splendid and moving film, about the life (especially as a couple) of the famous American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein , who became an overnight star at age 25, triumphing at Carnegie Hall after replacing an indisposed conductor at short notice.
Maestro, a film on the theme of duality, recounts 30 years of an atypical marriage – Bernstein was bisexual, which his wife knew. It is conceived like a symphonic work or a musical comedy: with its melodies, its counterpoints, its silences, its crescendos and its multiple variations of tempos.
The director of the most recent adaptation of A Star Is Born (starring Lady Gaga) imposes a particular rhythm on the story, embracing the both hyperactive and depressive nature of his subject, an extroverted conductor coupled with an introverted composer . We have to adapt, at the beginning, to this frenzied pace, to this choppy editing, to this strafing of overlapping dialogues. Bradley Cooper’s direction, which multiplies the play of shadows (the film is shot partly in black and white) and poetic visual discoveries, is ingenious and remarkable.
Carey Mulligan is particularly exceptional in the role of actress, activist and wife of Leonard Bernstein, Felicia Montealegre, who has had to make many compromises and crush her pride to keep her marriage afloat and protect her three children from gossip. “There’s a saying in Chile,” Felicia tells Leonard, as their marriage falters. You should never stay under a bird that is full of shit…”
At the heart of Maestro, everything but incidental, there is of course the music of the most famous American conductor, composer notably of the musical West Side Story and the music of the film On the Waterfront, by Elia Kazan. This majestic music, chosen by Bradley Cooper from sometimes little-known works in Bernstein’s repertoire, was mainly recorded for the film’s soundtrack by the London Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of Quebecer Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
A pivotal scene from Maestro, as Bernstein conducts the orchestra in a church with his flamboyant style and electrifying energy, is one of the high points of this gut-wrenching biographical work.
We have talked extensively, ahead of its theatrical release, since the presentation of Maestro in competition at the Venice Film Festival, about the controversy over the nasal prosthesis worn by Cooper, assimilated to “Jewface”, an anti-Semitic stereotype. We quickly forget this nose because it seems so natural.
I would rather criticize the film for the overly explanatory nature of certain dialogues. Show, don’t tell, as they say in Hollywood. This also goes for biographical notes that are inserted into replies: “You were appointed to such a position in such and such a year, you won such and such a prize the following year, etc. » It’s a very small downside in a concert of praise.
