Helga without the H

Every year* I attempt (with varying degrees of success and effort) to watch as many of that year’s Oscar nominees as possible. For the past few years* I’ve posted reviews of these movies here on this blog. At some point before the awards ceremony, I usually write up some sort of over-analysis and maybe some predictions, but we’ll see if I run out of steam before then. In the meantime, today we cover…

*Except 2022, when I was too burned out from 2021’s binge to give a crap.

Maestro

[7 nominations for best picture, actor (Bradley Cooper), actress (Carrie Mulligan), original screenplay, cinematography, hair/makeup, and sound]

IS IT SALTBURN? Umm… I think no?

I’ll be honest; I keep forgetting that this movie exists. I feel like every year there’s a best picture nominee that I just keep forgetting about, and for whatever reason, this year that movie is Maestro. Now sometimes the complete lack of impression is because of the movie itself, sometimes it’s because of my own personal preferences, and sometimes it really just comes down to what happened to be going on when I watched the movie (was it the 30th film in a row during a binge? Was I tired? Was my attention divided? Etc.) Which was the case for Maestro? Let’s go on a magical journey of discovery together, shall we?

What do I remember from my experience watching the film? When I try to think about this, I mostly come up with positive stuff. First, just like with all my other reviewed films so far, I found myself making a comparison during the viewing. The comparison here was to Bradley Cooper’s previous Oscar-nominated biopic (ahem, fictional) about a musician. I was not a fan of A Star is Born, as evidenced here in my previous review when I claimed that without Lady GaGa the film would be “a giant turd.” My reasoning? “I admit that I frankly thought this was a bad movie. I came away feeling more that I had watched a good impression of a good movie, than a good movie itself. What it really came down to, I think, was the film just rang, well, shallow.” So as I started watching Maestro, I got this eerie feeling that maybe Cooper read my review, took on the feedback, and came back with this: a real musical biopic that actually had real things to say. Maestro was everything that A Star is Born was not, in the best possible way.

First, it featured an actual musical genius. Second, that musical genius had actual real shit going on. What was that real shit? Part of it was composing and conducting and teaching and all the other work-related stuff for which he’s actually famous. But also he was a loving family man (arguably) who had to balance his love for his wife and kids with his homosexuality (a big no-no at the time) and his rampant promiscuity (less of a no-no for some reason?) Cooper also worked very hard on details, and it shows (at least, it fooled this untrained eye.) He worked with Bernstein’s kids to get their seal of approval on his depiction. I think I read somewhere that he studied conducting to make sure the conducting scenes are as accurate as possible. And Cooper’s own impression of Bernstein in the titular role was pretty dang good (note I say “impression” not “depiction.” Honestly with characters this recognizable it’s tough to balance an honest and original performance necessary to be a convincing person, with the imitation necessary to be a convincing persona.)

Rounding out my list of compliments, I remember thinking that the cinematography, directing, editing, production design, etc were all pretty good. This felt like a real Oscar movie. This was actual art. Not an impression of art. Again, I have trouble remembering this movie, but I do recall a couple scenes that I found very visually effective. One was at the very start (maybe even the very first scene?) when Bernstein receives a phone call asking him to pinch-hit at Carnegie Hall (I think). I think the screen was black, then a shade opens to reveal a big white square, and Cooper is all excited and bangs on some guy’s butt, and next thing we know he’s in a glorious magical theatre ready for his life to explode. I might be remembering the details wrong, but it started with a great energy, and I loved it. The other scene that I remember standing out what some sort of party. I don’t remember the exact details of the scene, but I remember thinking that it did a good job of moving us forward in time to a new period without having to resort to flashing a date on the screen or have anyone talk about a current event. I just went back and re-watched a trailer in hopes that the scenes in question would appear and remind me why I liked them. The scenes weren’t there, but the trailer did remind me that, overall, the film’s style and general feel kept changing to match the time period in question. We switched from black and white in the early scenes, to kinda grainy gray sets in the 70’s, and then full-HD for Lenny’s end-of-life scenes when we could see every single wrinkle and sunspot that the makeup team applied oh-so-flawlessly. So anyway, lots of good stuff here!

However…

I dunno, this just didn’t sing for me. Certain scenes did, sure. Mostly they were the scenes referencing Bernstein’s music. But overall, I just didn’t feel invested. Why not? I think, largely, I am just not the target audience here. I feel like this film was made for Bernstein fans. But I, frankly, didn’t know much about him at all going in (though I have the West Side Story original Broadway cast recording practically memorized.) I was very much looking forward to learning more. But I honestly felt like I learned virtually nothing. I found out that he was married, had a lot of affairs, including with men, and that he hid it from his kids but not his wife. His wife died which made him sad. Along the way he was a beloved musician in multiple roles and genres. And… that’s pretty much it. That’s all I learned. Then I started researching on Wikipedia, and reading other reviews, and turns out there was a lot more to say about this guy and his family. So why select such boring stuff for the movie? That’s the problem, really. I was bored. I said this in my Oppenheimer review, and I’ll say it here as well; I’m just not that into watching these movies about dudes who achieved greatness while also cheating on their spouses. Why? Why is this what we focus on? At least Oppenheimer was still primarily about the bomb-building, but Maestro went out of its way to center on Bernstein’s relationship with his wife. Of all the things to focus on, why this? Why the cheated-on, annoyed wife who still stays by his stupid cheating side? It was a big enough focus of the plot that Carrie Mulligan was nominated for best actress, not best supporting actress. Because, supposedly, it was meant to be a film about their relationship. Bullshit. If it was a film about their relationship, we would have had way more content about her actual life outside of Bernstein. We wouldn’t have titled the film based on just one of the two leads. We wouldn’t have the film start and end with him, and she’s just a passenger he picks up and drops off along the way to make a few kids for him. Am I over-simplifying? Yeah, I am. Mulligan’s character (do I remember her name? Nope! What does that tell you?) is a bit more interesting and complex than most cheated-on-wives in biopics. But only a bit.

Bottom line: It’s a well-made film. It will resonate with plenty of viewers. But it just didn’t resonate with me personally.