Actor and director Bradley Cooper brings all the right cinematic notes to his latest project, the massive biopic Maestro about New York Philharmonic legend Leonard Bernstein, in it’s World Premiere at the New York Film Festival NYFF61. The debut screening was held, appropriately,at David Geffen Hall, formerly Avery Fisher Hall, “the house that ‘Lenny ‘built.” The film is in theaters everywhere.
The list of credits at the top of the screen is a “whose who” of American film royalty with both Scorcese and Spielberg heading the list of producers.
Leonard Bernstein was a larger than life figure. The first American conductor and the first American Jew to burst on the nation’s concert stage, Bernstein landed like a meteor into virtually every American home through the then new medium of television. His groundbreaking Omnibus shows on CBS and his Young People’s Concerts, which brought the world the likes of a then 16 year old Andre Watts, the first Black concert pianist on the major concert stage, cemented his place in the classical firmament. If film audiences aren’t familiar with his work on the cencert stage. they certainly know his groundbreaking work on Broadway and in film with Steven Sondheim and Jerome Robbins in West Side Story. Considered to be the most important American condcutor of our time, he re eived numerous honors and awards, including seven Emmys, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammys, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as an Avademy Award nomination and the Kennedy Center Honor.
A lifelong humanitarian, Bernstein was outspoken in his support of Civil Rights and his oppositiion to the Viet Nam War.. He later used his talents to raise money for HIV/AIDS awareness and research. His commitment to the cause of freedom continued to the end of his life. One of his final achievements was the conducting of an historic performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9, the “Ode To Joy” at the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Cooper’s judicious use of both black and white and color cinematography to indicate time shifts and his meticulous use of the actual settings where all of the landmark events in Bernstein’s life took place, tmakes this as authentic an account of this larger-than-life personage as is artistically possible.
“It was important that we go to all of these hallowed spaces, those sacred places,” said Jamie Bernstein, daughter of the famed conductor, who acted as a technical advisor on the film. “It was important that we be at Carnegie Hall, the family compound in Connecticut, The Shed at Tanglewood, the cathedrals and conert halls where he recorded Beethoven and Mahler and so many other touchstones of his life.”
The central focus of the film is the enduring relationship between Bernstein and his wife, the beautiful Costa Rican actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn (Carey Mulligan). “It was essential that the film center around that relationship,” said screenwriter Josh Singer.
Meticulous cinematography by Matthew Libatique brings the sweeping landscape of Bernstein’s life into sharp focus. From the opening tracking shot which leads from Bernstein’s loft in the upper reaches of Carnegie Hall to the stage of that hallowed concert space where he made his hastily orchestrated, historic debut with the NY Phil, to the family compound in Connecticutt, to their luxury apartment in the Dakotas, where we see an errant Snoopy float from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade underscore the absurdity of a marital spat, no stone is left unturned.
Cooper as Bernstein is a complete masterwork of makeup artistry and superb acting. The star and director completely submerges himself in his character. The actor is unrecognizable due to painstaking use of makeup and prosthetics.
“The nose and the ears were especially triumphs of the art,” Singer noted.
“Brad was on the set for makeup every morning at 4am, so that he would be completely in character by the time the rest of the cast and crew showed up,” said supervising art director Deborah Jensen.
All of the important figures that shaped Bernstein’s life and career are enacted by a superb cast. The film forthrightly and seamlessly deals with Bernstein’s sexuality without comprising the central theme of the film.
“At it’s center, this is the story of that marriage. That enduring relationship,” screenwriter Singer asserted.
With music by Leonard Bernstein, Maestro streams on Netflix beginning Dec. 20. For more on NYFF61 visit filmlinc.org, also Netflix.com.
