Lenny’s relationship with Felicia was an advanced one, but “Maestro” hardly ever digs far past the floor. The 2 share a bubbly, infectious chemistry as they meet and fall in love – and Cooper the director correctly lets these scenes, and later the couple’s arguments, play out in lengthy, single takes. The love between them feels real, and Mulligan is ceaselessly magnificent, discovering avenues into her portrayal of Felicia that elevate it past the mere woman-behind-the-man notion. And but, the Costa Rican-Chilean actress is usually actually in Bernstein’s shadow; one picture finds her standing within the wings as her husband conducts, with the exaggerated form of him swallowing her up as if he have been a monster. (Mulligan can also be the beneficiary of costume designer Mark Bridges’ most beautiful fashions all through the movie.) However how does Felicia actually really feel about having to share her husband with a sequence of males, most of them youthful and fawning? She catches him kissing a celebration visitor within the hallway of their condo within the historic Dakota constructing and icily scolds him: “Repair your hair. You’re getting sloppy.” That comes near the form of actual, uncooked emotion that will have given “Maestro” extra heft.
Talking of the skin-deep nature of the film, a lot has been made about Cooper’s resolution to put on elaborate prosthetics to make his transformation into Bernstein extra full. The distinguished nostril, specifically, has been a supply of consternation, as Cooper isn’t Jewish. (Bernstein’s personal kids have defended the selection.) Make-up guru Kazu Hiro, who gained Academy Awards for turning Gary Oldman into Winston Churchill for “The Darkest Hour” and Charlize Theron into Megyn Kelly for “Bombshell,” does totally convincing work right here, particularly when Bernstein seems as a 70-year-old man on the very starting and finish of the movie.
One thing does occur towards the movie’s conclusion, although, that’s deserving of criticism. It’s the late Nineteen Eighties, and the body has expanded to widescreen. Bernstein is driving his Jaguar convertible, blaring R.E.M.’s “It’s the Finish of the World as We Know It (And I Really feel Positive).” Simply as he zooms into the middle of the shot, lead singer Michael Stipe yells the lyric “Leonard Bernstein!” Now, perhaps that is one thing Bernstein did in actual life; he clearly thought fairly extremely of himself, so perhaps he was so tickled to be talked about on this capability. However in a film, this alternative was eye-rollingly on the nostril. I groaned audibly.
Bernstein took possibilities along with his work; that’s what made him nice. “Maestro” would have been stronger if it had performed the identical.
In theaters now. On Netflix on December twentieth.
