The world—this world—is obsessed with everything about you.
So says an interviewer to Leonard Bernstein in his prime and so it was in mid-to-late-twentieth-century American culture, when novelists and essayists and Broadway composers and even great conductors could hold the center of public attention—this public—as long as they were larger than life. As far as being a colossus, “Lenny” couldn’t help himself—he loved art and people and life too much. According to him, too much to actually sit alone and do much composing. He left the world Mass, as well as three symphonies, two operas, a film score (On the Waterfront), two dance collaborations with Jerome Robbins (including Fancy Free, which was turned into the musical On the Town), and three additional Broadway shows of note (Wonderful Town, Candide, and West Side Story). But Bernstein himself thought that the list should have been much longer.
You’ll hear bits and pieces of some of these compositions in Bradley Cooper’s new film (with the director lovingly portraying the title character as an irresistible enfant terrible), but MAESTRO is a marriage story as much as a musical. As a gay man who fell in love with and married an actress (Felicia Montealegre, played in the film by Carey Mulligan) and fathered three children, Bernstein’s complicated persona—the public performance of his many selves, creative and otherwise—became a balancing act of various dimensions. Blithe, jaunty, urbane, Bernstein—rarely without a cigarette—exhibited supernatural amounts of energy and talent, on the conductor’s podium and off. For two hours, MAESTRO captures enough of his genius and infectious joie de vivre to illuminate, even justify, the world’s obsession.
MAESTRO is streaming on Netflix. See info and link below for details.
MAESTRO
Directed by Bradley Cooper
Streaming on Netflix
January 5 through March 14
Los Feliz 3
1822 North Vermont, Los Angeles
December 29 through March 6
Lumiere Music Hall
9036 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills
November 22 through December 6, December 26, 28, January 2–4, 9–11, 22–25, 30, February 1, 7, 12, 20–22, March 4, and 6
Egyptian
6712 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles
Q & A with Carey Mulligan
Friday, January 12
Landmark Sunset
8000 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles
January 5
Q & A with Carey Mulligan
Aero Theatre
1328 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica
November 22 through December 28, and February 23 through 29
Landmark Westwood
1045 Broxton Avenue, Los Angeles
December 1 through 21
NoHo 7
5240 Lankershim Boulevard, North Hollywood
November 22 through February 1
Paris Theater
4 West 58th Street, New York City
November 22 through December 14
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston Street, New York City
Bradley Cooper, Maestro (2023), from top: Bradley Cooper; Matt Bomer (left) and Cooper; Carey Mulligan and Cooper, Ed Murrow’s Person to Person show; Mulligan; Gideon Glick and Cooper; Cooper; Maestro U.S. poster; Isabel Leonard (left), Rosa Feola, and Cooper; Cooper and Mulligan on set; Cooper and Mulligan on set at Ely Cathedral.
Stills and set photographs by Jason McDonald; images courtesy and © Netflix.
