Maestro

What’s love got to do with it?

It’s hard to think of Leonard Bernstein as an insecure man. He was a larger than life, charismatic presence, incandescent at the podium, but like giant narcissists, he apparently had a gaping hole of need for love and validation. The conductor who became an overnight sensation when he was called to substitute for Bruno Walter at Carnegie Hall, Bernstein may have felt that he had not quite earned the praise. Director Bradley Cooper, playing Bernstein, chooses to tell his story from the angle of his homosexuality and love for his formidable wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).

Current biopics are no longer literal narrative arcs from birth to death crammed into two hours, but impressionistic tone poems that hinge on one aspect of a person’s life. This approach tends to work better than paint by numbers biographies. Some good examples are Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino’s insane look into the mysterious staying power of Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti) and Jackie, by Pablo Larrain, which focuses on Jackie Kennedy as she lives through the assassination of her husband and its aftermath. Bradley Cooper’s Maestro (written by Cooper and Josh Singer) tries for a similar tack with uneven results. It focuses on Bernstein’s sexual relationships with men and his unfaithfulness. This duality could have been a springboard from which to examine the dual nature of his particular…