Story: This biography of legendary music composer Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) dives into his sudden stardom and his complex relationship with his actress wife Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein (Carey Mulligan) whilst touching upon his alternate sexuality.

Review: In one of the early scenes, director Bradley Cooper shows himself as the young Leonard Bernstein excitedly jumping out of his bed, ready to conquer the world. In this very early scene, he shows a succinct cinematic brilliance by revealing two important facets of Bernstein’s life - one is the fact that a 25 year old budding composer has just got the chance of a lifetime that will catapult him into the big league and second - his homosexuality, as he jumps back onto the bed, and lovingly slaps the butt of his his gay partner clarinetist David Oppenheim, who spent the night with him. This same scene is then continued into a long pull out shot that reveals the expansive grandeur of the iconic Carnegie hall in New York where Bernstein is about to fill in for the famous conductor and pianist Bruno Walter. This is 1943 and the screen is black and white, but there is so much colour in Bernstein’s life. Director, co-writer and the lead actor of the film, Bradley Cooper doesn’t entirely capture that colour perhaps because he knows just how overwhelming it could be to cover the illustrious life and times of a legend like Bernstein. So, he keeps his story largely focussed on the music composer’s personal life. And in that too, a large part of the narrative deals with Bernstein’s relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre.

This is a film that hinges mainly on performances and less on the optics. And it wins everytime Cooper and Mulligan are on screen together. Both are equally brilliant in internalising every nuance of their character and portraying it convincingly on the screen. Cooper lets Bernstein’s life flow on the screen effortlessly, looking and acting like him. Despite the criticism over his use of a prosthetic nose to depict Bernstein’s Jewish lineage, one cannot deny that Cooper’s transformation is flawless. Mulligan too gives a career best performance as a woman, who is beautiful, famous, loved, aging, and dying an imminent death due to an illness. Amidst all of this, she has to deal with her husband’s love for other men. And she does.

But what the film misses out on is to fully capture the scale of Bernstein’s illustrious career and more rambunctious liaisons with men. It takes a very safe and conventional route in showcasing both the aspects, blunting their impact almost entirely. Despite being a biography named ‘Maestro’, we seldom see Bernstein’s brilliance on the stage. Neither are there too many moving pieces to capture the scale of the story’s musical fabric. Matthew Libatique’s cinematography fantastically blends many aspects of the lifestyle and the time that is portrayed in the film.

‘Maestro’ is no doubt a masterpiece in performance and setting the stage for a story that is far more potent than what we eventually end up seeing on the screen. It’s neither provocative nor filled with enough tension unlike Leonard Bernstein’s distinguished work of art.