Maestro tells the story of the life of Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper), the conductor, composer and pianist, who is considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time. He was also the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim. The story mostly focuses on his love and tumultuous marriage to Felicia (Carey Mulligan), a Chile-born actress with considerable fame of her own.

Produced by Stephen Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, directed and written by Bradley Cooper himself, the movie was nominated for seven Oscars and many other awards.

I knew very little about Bernstein’s life and acclaim, other than that I used to buy his records of the symphonies of Mozart and Beethoven in my early twenties, when I listened to a lot of classical music. Bernstein were the records I went for when given a choice.

I didn’t know he was bi-sexual, and maintained affairs with women and men throughout his life. You might imagine that that complicated his marriage and added endless drama to his life. And that’s what you feel and experience when watching Maestro.

Then there was the endless, constant smoking. Bernstein was a heavy smoker all his life. I could almost smell the smoke coming out of the movie, it was so present in every scene.

But in the end, I didn’t think I really learned much about Bernstein through the movie itself. The first half was slow and in black and white – for some reason they thought it would make sense to show black and white when there were only black and white movies in the 1940s and 1950s. It was slow enough  that I picked up my phone and checked Wikipedia for Bernstein’s life, biography and highlights, and I think I learned more about the man from what I read in the Wiki article while the movie was rolling, than I learned from the movie itself.

The story focuses on Bernstein’s sexuality and it skips quickly between the phases of his life without much substance to the story or noticeable transitions. We know he pined for his wife and mourned her death, but the jump from suffering while his wife was ill to his teaching performance some ten years later was abrupt, as if they wanted to get the movie over with.

My favorite scene was the conducting of the London Symphony Orchestra at the Ely Cathedral in 1976. I really showed Bernstein’s passion for the music and his talent. For those of us like myself, who do not know much about orchestral music and particularly conducting, the whole thing looks more like magic than craft. I trust it is craft. The scene was amazing, and that scene is worth watching the entire movie for.

When I checked IMDb afterwards, I found out that Cooper actually did this live himself and he said the following about it:

That scene I was so worried about because we did it live… I was recorded live. I had to conduct them. And I spent six years learning how to conduct six minutes and 21 seconds of music. I was able to get the raw take where I just watched Leonard Bernstein [conduct] at Ely Cathedral… And so I had that to study.

Maestro is a mediocre film with moments of genius and passion sprinkled around in it.