By: Lieba Nesis

Brad Cooper’s much anticipated “Maestro” hit limited theaters on November 22nd while slated for Netflix on December 20th. Purchasing a ticket to view this 2-hour-and-9-minute disaster on a big screen did nothing to alleviate my boredom. Cooper who directs and acts in nearly every scene of this drama is on a roll after receiving critical acclaim and success for directing and acting in “A Star is Born” in 2018. Cooper even co-wrote the “Maestro” script with Josh Singer choosing to highlight the romantic portion of Bernstein’s epic life.

Cooper, who has lost nine previous Oscar nominations is lobbying hard for an Academy Award with a display of accessibility: bringing his six and a half year old daughter Lea to the Los Angeles premiere and serving Philly cheesesteaks at a New York foodtruck-“Hail Mary” moves for the normally cagey actor.  His 2018 New York Times interview was entitled “Brad Cooper is not Really into this Profile” as he angrily went on a press tour for “A Star is Born”.  Fast forward five years and he is desperately angling for an Oscar and pulling out all his bag of tricks to do so.

The movie, which Cooper claims was 6 years in the making for a 6 minute Mahler conducting scene, faces an uphill Oscar battle as it has been embroiled in controversy due to Cooper’s massive prosthetic nose which took 6 hours in makeup and is a Nazi propaganda tool termed “Jewface”. As exploding anti-Semitism rages through universities and the media the timing of the movie couldn’t be worse following Hamas’s October 7th massacre of 1,400 Israelis. Equally deplorable is Cooper’s decision to sign a letter in mid-October urging Israel to enact an immediate ceasefire before she had a chance to defend herself.

His increasingly serious relationship with Israel hater Gigi Hadid who recently accused Israel of raping, abducting, and torturing prisoners of war along with harvesting the organs of dead Palestinians without their consent calls into question the suitability of Cooper’s portrayal of Israel devotee Leonard Bernstein .  48-year-old Cooper recently purchased a house in Bucks County near 28-year-old Gigi’s mother who lives on a farm a few miles away as marriage bells appear imminent. With the Oscar season in full swing Cooper has unsuccessfully tried to keep the pairing on the down low.

Despite all the background noise the true problem with the movie is the movie.  Its disjointed nature fails to adequately evoke who Leonard Bernstein was.  Cooper is so focused on getting the voice and fake tan right that he never bothers developing the character. He should have availed himself of the expertise of producers Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg who know a thing or two about directing as it was clear he was in over his head. When the official logline of a movie alerts you to a movie’s premise being: “a towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein”- you are in trouble.

Force-feeding an audience is a bad harbinger for things to come. Cooper’s exaggerated prosthetics are more like “Elephant Man” than Leonard Bernstein as he correctly chose to go without makeup in his 2014 Broadway debut of “Elephant Man” preferring to evoke malformations unlike his Bernstein portrayal where his entire face looks like silly putty.  The movie begins with a hackneyed Leonard Bernstein writing declaring “a work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers”-thanks for clearing that up.  We then meet a 70-year-old piano-playing Bernstein reminiscing about his wife Felicia whose ghost frequently appears.

Cooper conjures Barry Manilow meets George Hamilton and Liberace on a night out more than Leonard Bernstein.  His sweaty and over-the-top conducting sequences are even more painful to watch, making a mockery out of the distinguished and enthusiastic Bernstein. Ten minutes into the movie Cooper takes us back to a black-and-white 1943 where a 25-year-old Bernstein who is an assistant conductor in the New York Philharmonic makes his debut when Bruno Walter falls ill.

The life-changing performance ends with a standing ovation that will usher in the career of one of the most acclaimed American conductors in history.  Bernstein’s wide spanning career includes 7 Emmys, 16 Grammys and 2 Tonys as well as being the first American to lead a major American symphony orchestra-the New York Philharmonic.  He also revived the music of Gustav Mahler while creating the masterpiece “West Side Story” as well as the original score for Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront”-all absent from the movie which prefers to focus on a contrived love story.  Bernstein’s portrayal is flat, more like an exaggerated hyenalike cartoon version of a human being than a serious humanitarian and civil rights advocate.  Bernstein’s love for Israel and his world famous “Hatikvah on Mt. Scopus” concert after the Six-Day War similarly goes unmentioned-hey Cooper has to be apolitical if he wants an Oscar.

When we first meet Bernstein he is having an affair with clarinetist David Oppenheim, pathetically played by Matt Bomer, until he becomes smitten with aspiring actress Felicia Montealegre, whom he meets at a party.  A stiff Carey Mulligan deftly portrays Felicia despite the two having zero chemistry as we are forced to watch them smooch, take endless romantic strolls and listen to Cooper utter lines akin to “I envy the air that funnels its way out of you”-how “English Patient” of Cooper.  The concocted scenes sound more like a movie trailer than an actual movie with characters uttering phrases such as “summer does sing inside me” and “your truth is a lie” with the casualness that one might order a slice of pizza-this isn’t the Middle Ages is it?

Cooper’s voice sounds like he swallowed a huge amount of helium with much of the dialogue being unintelligible.  Cigarettes should be given acting credits as they appear in more scenes than a Marlboro commercial.  Cooper’s inexperience is evident in the minor details such as when his hair changes from thick to thin, then gray, then thin and then thick again-does hair double in size when one reaches 70?  Much is made of the intense ardor between Leonard and Felicia while Bernstein has an affair with anything within a two-meter radius.

A lonely and miserable Felicia watches her husband openly cavort with male and female students declaring that he will “die a lonely old queen” when she is in fact the lonely one who dies of lung cancer after inhaling his 200-a-day cigarette habit compounded by her own smoking. Bernstein could not even heed her only request of discretion as his daughter Jamie approaches him about rampant rumors of same sex infidelity.  When Felicia gives Bernstein an ultimatum to choose her or Tom Cothran, his young paramour, he goes for the latter with Bernstein’s callousness resulting in her early demise at the age of 56.

Brad Cooper was inexplicably convinced this was the love story of the century so instead of focusing on Bernstein’s whirlwind career or what made him tick intellectually he chose the focal point of a loveless and depressing marriage where we are forced to watch Felicia endure a grueling death with endless closeups.  Bernstein is depicted as a recklessly troubled individual who openly snorts cocaine at parties and tells David Oppenheim’s child “I slept with both your mother and father”-is that his greatest legacy?

Astoundingly Bernstein’s three children Jamie, Alexander and Nina were besotted by Cooper’s performance calling it spot-on and claiming it captured their father’s essence-maybe there are monetary rewards looming. The incredibly private Bernstein who died at the age of 72 in 1990 would be cringing at his portrayal as a ruthless, confused and self indulgent hedonist: A balanced comprehensive film exploring the nuances of this American giant living up to the title “Maestro” is now more necessary than ever.