“Maestro” Bernstein, a double life with soap paints

Leonard Bernstein Bradley Cooper fell in love with him when he was a child: “At home we listened to his records all the time,” he says in the festival catalogue. Owner – with what the American actor and director after success A star is born Returning to the Lido this time in competition – albeit practically, since neither he nor Carey Mulligan, the main character, accompanied the show due to the Hollywood strikes – thus has its origins in those childhood discoveries. And in fantasies about how he once conducted an orchestra himself, two ideas convinced him to embody the “Maestro” in this second direction of his, which, while remaining in the musical universe, is very different from the previous variation of the classic. The birth of a star based on the iconic presence of Lady Gaga.

WE ARE HERE in the world of Leonard Bernstein, a monumental figure in twentieth-century music, who started very early and immediately made an unconventional choice that he revolutionized with his “physical” way of standing on the podium, almost like a dance in which he participated the orchestra and the audience, the canons of the orchestral conducting. Intuitive performer, composer, pianist, author of innovative works, even inspired by classics and Broadway musicals – his West Side Story

remains a foundational benchmark for the genre. Lecturer, popularizer, CBS television music writer, director, including the New York Philharmonic in New York, and president and honorary director of the Church of Santa Cecilia, Bernstein, who died in 1990 at the age of seventy-two, was many. Together, and this is a unique figure. As he says as a boy in the film (from December 20 on Netflix, written by Cooper himself and Josh Singer), when he talks to the woman he marries: “You and I are many parts, and this effort is the person in front of us.” . Judaism, disagreements with family, marriage and his bisexuality

BETWEEN THESE plays for Bernstein are Judaism, there are disagreements with the family – the father would like him to take over the family business. And there is his bisexuality, which divides him between love for a deep relationship with the woman who will become his wife, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), and love for boys, of which there will be many. As a Chilean-born Broadway and TV actress, she will always know everything from the beginning in the “agreement” of freedom and respect, which, however, Bernstein seems to break over time. There is nothing easier, he is great, but at the same time he is narcissistic, self-centered, with a constant need for attention and an inability to stop his movement. However, while Felicia does not get tired, the children begin to understand – “these are just conversations of envious people,” the father renounces at the request of his wife. The two broke up, perhaps because their relationship with a boy whom Bernstein refers to as “my elf”, clarinetist David Oppenheim, had become burdensome. He comes to live in the house of his former love, musician Tom Cotram, decides not to hide anymore – an important passage decided by the director by having him wear a “Breton” shirt – and with coca-based parties and a disheveled beard. .

EXACTLY this is the essence and limit of a narrative based on a particular split between the balance of marriage and Bernstein’s sexual irresistibility, ignoring almost everything else. Is it really so important in the reading of the artist? Perhaps, but as part of a complex life, one of those “pieces” that look more like a monolith here. He returns when she falls ill and accompanies her to the end, deep down they have always loved each other. However, little is left of music, art, politics, as well as existential complexities.

“MATERIAL SCENE” (musical) is a direction Maxs (1971) Mass played in its entirety – at the beginning of the meeting with Felicia, the rhythms of the musical with sailors are played (In the city

) seems almost a coincidence. And even as he explains to the young conductor how to proceed, little happens other than that they will have sex – by the way, the boy is African American, this is Cooper’s way of telling us about his support for Bernstein and Bernstein’s fight for civil rights in the US. America, Felicia Montealegre? Cooper turns Bernstein’s life into a kind of soap, confirming his “veracity” with a long final scene in which we see the “real” white-clad Bernstein on the catwalk, sandwiched between “genius” stereotypes and bombastic cinematic form, allowing his case to slip away without flashes even among his “scenes from the wedding”. Sin.