Maestro Review: A Well Orchestrated Hit?

I'll just I'll spoil our review right now why I'm so excited about this review is because a certain someone loves the movie and perhaps even use the word masterpiece which he often hesitates to use whereas the other is strongly anti-maestro. Maggie do you want to take it first? Yes um I am very mean about this movie it was the only movie this entire year that I genuinely thought about getting up and walking out of and I think it's because I have like to some degree like an emotional attachment to musical theater which you know Leonard was very involved in and that's where I've I've learned a lot of stuff about him over the years so I came into this as like somebody who has like historian's background and knows a lot about him and I felt like this was more of a character of who the man was than necessarily a biopic and it felt like with Bradley being you know the director the writer and the star that he took the things from you know Bernstein's life that he thought would be a good like Oscar role for him like that there was like stuff about Leonard's life you know he was you know watched by the FBI for some of his involvement in civil rights movements he was blacklisted for a while and while he never like went before like the house on house committee or any of that era he was still very much affected by that and he did a lot of like activism for like the AIDS crisis and for Vietnam war and like there's a lot of facets to his life and Felicia's life that I felt like were left out of this in favor of like seven seven minute long orchestration scenes and then I felt like there was like some weird framing of like his bisexuality that came across kind of weird because it was used to show that he cheated even though he also cheated with her on women and so it was just it felt like a weird framing in a lot of ways and I ultimately felt like um his legacy was sacrificed for Bradley's desire to be Oscar nominated which is never a great feeling to feel when you're watching a movie that you were really excited for like I was really excited for this because I know a lot about the subject and I have like Bradley's like other works and I love Carey Mulligan and it was just ultimately very disappointing okay okay well I mean that's a that's a different of difference of perspective here because I did not come at this with with a historian level knowledge of of his experience I mean obviously I knew the broad strokes given how iconic he is and how his works are everywhere I went in I always hate talking about expectations but like we're human beings literally everybody goes into a movie with expectations it's about keeping your mind open enough to experiencing the story that the filmmaker wants to tell the expectations I did go into it with was you know I don't know if like a traditional biopic about uh about Leonard Bernstein is really gonna be for me I like I just I don't know if I'm gonna like it for that reason and then what I got was as as as untraditional as I could have imagined I was I was really shocked and taken by how well woven I thought his his uh the depiction of the pursuit of his career and craft was with his personal relationships in his life and like I thought both were on their own path that were really strong stood on their own two feet and got stronger by how they were woven together and I think one of my biggest takeaways by the end of the movie was I didn't expect Maestro to leave me in a puddle of tears but I think Bradley Cooper I think is phenomenal in this movie I I could name many a scenes where I'm like that like the scene that you pinpoint I think is one of the most exceptional scenes of the entire year on many different levels like performance craftsmanship you name it I do think Carrie Mulligan is is the Maestro sneak attack where she comes in and winds up stealing the movie by the end I do agree with you on that fact she she's exceptional I've seen many performances from her that I like love love love oh yeah I need to watch this a few more times before I say something this definitive but like this is gonna be top tier for me from her I thought she was exceptional in this but overall I was I was incredibly moved and just like mesmerized by the visual craftsmanship in this movie I love the movie like the fact that he opted and also now I'm like thinking about a million things but also Bradley behind the lens one thing I really appreciated about this movie is I think that like everything that I was witnessing signaled to me that this was exclusively his version of the movie which I always appreciate I never really want to see a movie where I sit there I'm like any filmmaker could have made that I like I like when someone puts their stamp on it and I saw that in so many ways here a particularly effective choice he made I think was to capture many major moments in longer shots rather than have them be overly edited and when it comes to that like six seven minute uh cathedral performance another thing that I really love in that is like there's something about the sound design in it where like you're not like you might not even realize it's happening until after the fact but somehow it's training your ear to like focus there's a multitude of sounds happening but to focus on the right thing at the right time and I feel like to be able to pull off something like that is is just like a real accomplishment for every single department but then also for Bradley Cooper as the film's Helmer to bring everything together so seamlessly while making sure he's being like look at how damn good their individual work is so really like every single layer of maestro I just thought I'll reuse the word I used in my in my tweet exquisite I loved it I love how like completely polar opposite are the thing is is that you know I don't think like Bradley Cooper's a bad director at all or a bad writer I like what he does behind the scenes a lot and I like the performances he gives when he's being directed by somebody else and so it's like it's a weird it's like a weird uh like merger for me to play off of the idea of murders of seeing him doing all three and I feel like I don't know in my like perspective there's certain aspects that end up being lost in the the weight because I mean being the director being the writer being the star that's like a lot a lot put into it especially what the film with this much built into it yeah I mean you know if you're gonna take on all those jobs you got to put a lot of your life into a movie and I think he said he's been working on this for something like like six years he really learned how to conduct and all that stuff um I'm trying to think of other uh crafts elements that I would that I would want to highlight but really every single element of this is exceptional also shout out to Maya Hawk I mean I love I love seeing an actor come in and take a smaller amount of screen time and make it feel so whole and real and like even though that person is a small player in this particular version of the story that she's having a big influence and I feel like every time she walked into frame like my eye was naturally drawn to her and she was serving the movie just as she should be so even though she's not on the Oscar conversation right now I just want to say Maya Hawk crushed it in this movie and just continues to deliver big and literally everything I've seen her in yeah she's great she's a very talented performer