“Maestro” is a film about creative restlessness. About wanting to fill life with as much as you can, about not having to choose who you are but to be everything you are. Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) was many things: composer, conductor, teacher. Married to a woman he loved, father of three children and sexually involved with many men.
He was a loner genius who composed in solitude and a sociopathic individual who could not even close the bathroom door for fear of missing something. To understand such a person, one must step into both the heart and the brain, Bradley Cooper seems to reason.
In the film we see therefore “Lenny” jump on projects and passions, both personal and professional, and then jump on to the next one. His music is only heard in short pieces. The cinematic language is the same: the camera flows in and out of scenes, sometimes without beginning or end.
A conversation there Bernstein excitedly explains to future wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan) that they are similar because they both try to live true to themselves, a swipe over a lunch with the mentor who suggests that Bernstein change his name to Burns, which becomes a theater scene in which Bernstein is spectators to his musical number and then suddenly be part of it himself.
In other words: an eclectic collage of an artist’s inner and outer life. Always creating, always doing. Of course, such a personality leaves emotional holes in those closest to him, i.e. his wife and children. “Maestro”, in its overwhelming, sometimes hysterical energy, conveys Bernstein’s duality clearly.
You don’t leave the salon with extensive Wikipedia knowledge about the great composer, but with respect for the artist Bradley Cooper who not only completely transformed into Bernstein but also challenged the biopic genre in the best way.