Review | Venice 2023: Maestro movie review – in stunning Leonard Bernstein biopic, Bradley Cooper plays the American orchestral conductor and composer
- Cooper plays the American conductor and composer with genuine feeling in this biopic he directed, and Carey Mulligan is terrific as his wife, Felicia
- Tracing his life from when he conducts the New York Phil aged 25, to how he is torn between Felicia and their children and a gay lover, this is a bravura film
5/5 stars
“The gift comes with burdens,” cries Leonard Bernstein in Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s stunning, symphonic biopic of the esteemed American conductor, composer and pianist.
With Bernstein played with genuine feeling by Cooper, those “burdens” are what drives this tale of the man behind such evergreen musicals as West Side Story and On the Town.
A father and a married man, Bernstein’s attraction to men is something he can’t – and won’t – deny at a time when rumours swirl around him. If he’s not careful, he’s going to die old and lonely, he’s told.
Tracing his life from 1943, when, as a young prodigy, he conducted the New York Philharmonic aged just 25, the film follows him across the years as the work and accolades accumulate. But Cooper and co-writer Josh Singer don’t dwell on cataloguing his achievements.
This is a deep dive into the “grand inner life”, as Bernstein calls it, and a candid portrait of his marriage to Chilean actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), mother to their two children, which gradually erodes because of his affair with musicals director Tommy Cothran (Gideon Glick).