I am convinced no one, not even the Oscar voters, has seen Maestro.
Bradley Cooper is nominated for every single prestigious film award and has taken home none of them, that happens. What doesn't happen is a film is released, an actor is nominated, and nobody talks about the performance. I have not heard one person talk specifics about Bradley Cooper. I have heard no one talk specifics about the film. Just the same buzzwords you hear about all movies. Heartfelt. Cooper is moving. Carrie Mulligan stuns. The film captures yadda yadda.
I think award voters watched the trailer, saw that it checked all the Oscar Bait boxes (secret gay struggle, dual color story, period piece, historical figure, based on a true story) and nominated it, film unseen.
Bradley Cooper spent 6 years learning how to compose. 6 years. For what? 1 movie that no one saw. 6 years to do a job, not many can understand just from watching it so he could've spent six months shadowing a composer and watching Leonard Bernstein footage and called it a day. The only people who would notice he was doing it wrong are music people, and even then they know it's a movie and he's an actor.
I don't need actors becoming professionals at their 6 month fake job.
Bradley Cooper's new biopic about Leonard Bernstein, Maestro, covers more than 40 years of his life, starting back in the 1940s. Cooper also portrays Bernstein throughout the film, just as Carey Mulligan plays his wife, Felicia, through all of those decades. According to Cooper, covering such a long period of time meant that the production crew had a lot of work to do, in terms of designing authentic looks, sets, and makeup for each of the different periods.
Maestro: Requiem for the Agony and Ectasy of an American Master Maestro
Netflix
Movie info via Rotten Tomatoes:
Maestro is a towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. A love letter to life and art, Maestro at its core is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love.
Review:
Netflix
Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s emotional biography of Leonard Bernstein’s (Cooper)…
"In high school, I’d see a movie at the local arthouse — like Living In Oblivion or Smoke — and want to dress like Harvey Keitel or Steve Buscemi. When I was in college, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and then starting out as an actor in New York, I’d go to a lot of thrift shops. I was dead broke, but from older movies, I had some loose appreciation of great style — Cary Grant, Paul Newman…that Ivy League look from the 50s and 60s."
Despite these steamy on-screen moments, off-screen, he’s a low-key family man; he’s been married to power publicist Simon Halls since 2011, and they’re raising three boys in Los Angeles. While the SAG/AFTRA strike prevented him from kissing and telling about his scenes with Messrs. Bailey and Cooper, it seemed a good time to check in with an old friend of the brand.
“Being a parent [of three boys] has taught me patience…they’re different people, so you want to give them the structure they need to survive and thrive, but also not dampen the spirit they come into the world with.”
"At a certain point you have to be true to yourself, and let the chips fall where they may. And by being true to myself, I ultimately ended up working with all the people I wanted to work with in the first place. It’s a very personal decision, and there shouldn’t be this one-size-fits-all dictum about coming out." Interview by Matt Bomer for Todd Snyder winter 2023