Maestro (2023)
Directed by Bradley Cooper
A towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. A love letter to life and art, Maestro at its core is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love.
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Maya Hawke's performance as daughter Jamie Bernstein, for instance, recalls Dan Futterman's character from The Birdcage — a straight scion who resents their queer parents.
…and Quentin Tarantino (The Hateful Eight, 2015).
The screenplay (by Cooper and Spotlight co-writer Josh Singer) does provide basics like Bernstein's big break in 1943 filling in to lead the New York Philharmonic-Symphony Orchestra, palling around with contemporaries like Jerome Robbins and Aaron Copland, Bernstein and Montealegre's initial meeting and courtship, and references to career-defining works like West Side Story.
His script – co-written with Spotlight and First Man scribe Josh Singer – instead explores the man and his fame through the figures in his list it most greatly affected: his family, and predominantly his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).
The film, which Cooper co-wrote with Oscar-winning Spotlight scribe Josh Singer, follows Bernstein’s life from his emergence as a world-renowned conductor and composer at the age of twenty-five, to his later lifestyle as a gay man.
"Maestro" comes alive as Cooper, who also co-wrote the screenplay (along with Oscar-winning "Spotlight" scribe Josh Singer), filters Bernstein's passion for life and all its grand indulgences into an intensely physical performance, which peaks in a sweat-drenched conducting sequence that bursts off the screen.
While Cooper's directing isn't nearly as much of a standout as his debut with A Star Is Born, the script he penned alongside Spotlight screenwriter Josh Singer is well-written and fun to listen to.
Cowriter (with Josh Singer, "Spotlight")/director Bradley Cooper’s second film as director/star once again delves into the romantic relationship of two artists where one outshines the other then loses them tragically.
Hell, even the Cooper-produced “Joker” pulled from a similar songbook, dusting off reliable American cinema standards and giving them a fresh new spin.