Maestro | Film Review

After being catapulted to fame, conductor Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) begins a relationship with Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) that changes both of their lives forever.

I had been putting off this movie for a long time. Ignoring all the press and the Oscars and everything else, I just didn't think it would be something I'd like. If it wasn't nominated, I'm not sure I ever would have made myself sit down and watch it.

As expected, I didn't love the film. There were things about it I liked, and things I didn't like, but overall I found it just okay.

The first thing that stood out was the cinematography. If nothing else, the film is great to look at and shot in a really interesting way.

Cooper and Mulligan have great chemistry.

But as good as they are together, the characters often don't feel like real people. In some scenes, they feel almost like caricatures.

The story is told well, but it isn't particularly interesting. In fact, I hate to say it, but I found some of it to be quite boring, and had to force myself to keep focused.

In terms of the performances, Mulligan's is slightly more impressive than Cooper's. But even with that (and they both did an amazing job with their characters), no performance in the film feels especially ground-breaking.

Caring about the characters really sneaks up on you. You don't know you care about them until you're nearing the end of the film and find yourself genuinely affected by the things that are happening. 

I've seen quite a few reviewers (and just people in general) calling the film Oscar bait, and I definitely get where this comes from. Though it does also genuinely seem like a passion project.

Overall, I understand the nominations, and it's clear to see that a lot of time, work and love went into the film. But this definitely isn't my favourite of the nominees I've seen, and I doubt I'll watch it again.

6/10