Let's be honest: Maestro shows us Bradley Cooper trying desperately to be Orson Welles, not Leonard Bernstein. It's a concerted - and not entirely unsuccessful - attempt to deliver a stylish, sweeping epic of at least comparable grandeur and import to Citizen Kane. And visually Maestro is certainly impressive, albeit with considerable help from Bernstein's magnificent music. Performances are also top notch. The only problem is that the film should be called Felicia, not Maestro. Bernstein actually gets rather short shrift. The emotional heft of the film is all with the wife, and the sympathy is pretty much all hers too. What makes this not just odd, but distasteful is the movie's curiously old-school approach to sexuality. While pretending to be relaxed about Lenny's bisexuality, Maestro is actually peddling a much more traditional tale of the poor martyred wife. Felicia selflessly marries the young genius, despite his sexual proclivities, then lives a life of constant heartbreak before (spoiler alert) dying a tragic death. Note how the crucial emotional scenes are all from Felicia's point of view. Catching Lenny kissing a guy at a party. Watching him holding his boyfriend's hand in the theatre. Meanwhile, Lenny's emotional investment in these men is not explored at all. And there's no hint of the extra-marital flings Bernstein had with women. No, only "other men" are the villains in Cooper's movie. Take out the extended sequences where Cooper gets to show off his conducting skills and the movie is almost entirely Felicia's story. For all the longing to be Orson, Maestro often reminded me more of Douglas Sirk, with Carey Mulligan standing in for Jane Wyman. Except that Sirk's movies were more emotionally honest, and nowhere near as pretentious. I'd certainly recommend Maestro for the visuals and the music. But if you were hoping for a genuinely insightful movie about musical genius and the sexual struggles of a world-famous composer-conductor, then try Tar instead.
