Maestro of your skill—the art of just doing it
I’m not sure if I’d call this piece a movie review but for the lack of clarity with a dash of indecisiveness, let’s stay with that.
My husband and I watched the new Bradley Cooper—actor-director-producer and what not—starrer @Netflix release Maestro on a lazy Sunday afternoon. We were snuggled in our snuggly couch with fuzzy socks, mushy blankets and sloppy overalls, as one would be in January in gloomy old London. I love painting a scene! Having witnessed our first conductor-led orchestra at the London Symphony Orchestra last year, followed by watching the Oscar nominated Cate Blanchett starrer Tár on a plane, we seemed to be quite taken with the mysterious grandeur of the conducting world (I’m sure its temporary). Hence Maestro was an obvious choice for our first film of 2024.
It starts with Bradley Cooper in a less than convincing but equally charming old-age makeup giving an interview whilst playing the piano where he pains for and misses his supposed wife. Cut to we are transported to the black and white film era clearly depicting the jump between timeframes that becomes quite pronounced throughout the film. Now when you dive into it without knowing that it’s a biographical drama based on the life of the renowned composer Leonard Bernstein (who we also didn’t know of) you really don’t know what to expect. 20ish minutes in, the underlying presumption that us less cultured, millennial, Netflix watching folk would know the personalities that were so casually name dropped becomes palpable, making it less motivating to keep up.
My husband obviously wanted to abandon it and I obviously didn’t. My argument being it’s probably an art film and we need to enjoy it under that lens. But then it starts changing, a storyline starts emerging and I eat my words and nonchalance of calling it an ‘art film’.
There is the luxury, glamour, love, lust and adultery after which you begin to expect a decline of some kind—the mellow background score and slower dialogue pacing is telling you that its coming. There’s a scene in which Leonard Bernstein (aka Bradley Cooper) is smoking in the balcony of his extravagant summer home and says to his wife—I am not feeling happy, it’s like the summer doesn’t sing in me anymore.
There comes another monologue sequence of an interview he does later on which is to turn into a book. While the interviewer/author eggs on about what an absolute marvel Bernstein’s composition and career has been, Bernstein on the contrary expresses his feelings of dissatisfaction about his body of work not being enough. While nothing in this big showman biographical portrayal seems relatable, this does—the imposter syndrome. Whatever career, big or small, celebrated or ordinary, a lot of us can’t escape the consuming thought of is this what it’s supposed to be? Is this it? It’s not all doom and gloom as he also offers some food for thought which stuck with me—he knows he loves music and that’s all he wants to dedicate all of himself to. This he surely knows.
That’s probably what leads to greatness or one’s sense of achievement? It’s not an ultimate destination, a number, a portfolio of work. It’s the acknowledgement and continuous practice of what you love or seemingly love and immersing yourself in it wholeheartedly. It’s the joy of that encapsulation—brilliantly depicted in a conducting sequence towards the end of the film—that’s probably it.
I didn’t intend to write this as a review or gaslight as a film critique. The film at best is an average on my rating scale but it nudged me to indulge in my mode of creative expression—I write to feel good, I must do it often, it may never lead to anything, but here I am. (did you catch my imposter syndrome plugging itself in in the last sentence?)
