Readers Write In #652: Drowned in relational conflict, ‘Maestro’ doesn’t quite soar masterfully to a crescendo

By Madan Mohan

With Maestro, the Netflix movie on the late, great Leonard Bernstein, out now, Youtube was lately bombarding me with videos of the man in action.  Watching him make renowned tenor Jose Carreras sweat reminded me of a music maestro closer home.  That and the sheer difficulty of keeping time on Something’s Coming (seriously, check it out) piqued me enough to want to watch Maestro.  I was also secretly thankful that it was music aficionado Bradley Cooper who had made this movie and not, um, Steven Spielberg (who produced it, nevertheless!). I looked forward to a focused treat for musophiles rather than Spielberg’s broad brushstrokes. Woe is me, to quote one of the characters of the film! Maestro concerns itself with throwing a light on Bernstein’s (Bradley Cooper) complicated relationship with wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) as well as his sexuality.  In that regard, it does work brilliantly, thanks in large part to Mulligan’s arresting performance.

The problem, though, is two fold. One, the relationship plays out through a series of not-too-related scenes so that you’re watching fascinating conflict without being aware of the backstory, the subtext.  As a result, when Felicia finally confronts ‘Lennie’ Bernstein, the moment doesn’t quite arrive organically.  I mean, we know she’s unhappy about him continuing to have flings with attractive young men so many years into their marriage but it’s the sudden explosion of temper that’s hard to get to grips to.  There’s also too little of his relationships with his offspring, such that it might have been better to not introduce them at all. The other and, for me, bigger problem is that Cooper sheds so much of a light on his character’s relational conflict that it blinds out his musical side into relative darkness.  Albeit it’s the moments when he’s working at his job that bring much needed joy into an often gloomy affair.  But we’re in the dark about the full scope of his achievements, though a quick Wikipedia-esque summary is mentioned in passing. But what about, for instance, the infamous footage of him conducting Carreras?  Indeed, his perfectionism and temper were both legendary but you wouldn’t suspect it from watching the film.  Because you don’t see, except in passing, what it was like for musicians to rehearse under his baton and nor do you see him working on compositions. Perhaps, Cooper presumes anyone interested in this film would have already consumed the available footage on Youtube (as I did) and so, showing incidents like the Carreras recording would be superfluous.  Even so, how can a movie about one of the most famous conductors and music educators of the 20th century feel complete when it barely touches upon Bernstein the musician? Even assuming that everyone, down to any eighteen year olds watching this movie, has already watched footage of Bernstein conducting or him offering insightful commentary on the Beatles, what harm could it have possibly done to capture a significant chunk of it in cinematic form? I am not averse to the movie also discussing his life behind the curtain but in that case, it should have at least been an hour longer to create a sumptuous blend of both sides of Bernstein (or better yet, been a series).  But I do believe that while even the best of documentaries may, justly or not, get forgotten with the passage of time, a great movie has more recall value. A movie about Bernstein had the potential to be the reference for decades to come, a sort of gateway into his world, his work.  Instead, Maestro’s laser focus on his contradictions almost makes you wonder if Cooper watched an early screening of Oppenheimer and decided to follow in its lead.  That choice worked for Oppenheimer due to the contradictions inherent in working on a weapon that could destroy the human race in one fell swoop.  Not so much here where, for all his complications, Bernstein’s work was ultimately life-affirming and delivered joy to those touched by it. This is particularly disappointing with Cooper at the helm as he had, on Star Is Born, deftly balanced the relationship thread with the one about music and discussed the classic art v/s commerce debate. I had imagined that the work of Bernstein would, then, have provided fertile ground for Cooper to depict music-making in a cinematically interesting way, but I was wrong! If indeed the work of the man who profoundly influenced Broadway music with West Side Story and who played a pivotal role in reviving Mahler’s works could be reduced to the complications of his love life, then, as he laments in the film, his life’s work has truly been an exercise in futility. Maestro is so bogged down by the turbulence of the world it creates that, with the sole exception of the passage recreating Bernstein conducting a Maher composition, it simply fails to soar to the grand symphonic crescendo that the maestro richly deserved.  Yeah, now that is something one could count on good ol’ Spielberg to deliver!