The Summer That Sings in Maestro
Currents
Leonard Bernstein was perhaps the foremost American conductor of the 20th century. And yet, in Bradley Cooper’s 2023 biopic, Maestro, Bernstein’s preeminence as a musical titan forms little more than the film's skeleton. What fleshes out the film and breathes true life into it is Leonard Bernstein’s bisexuality and the ways in which it mirrors the many dualities in both his life and career.
The film, which was directed, co-written, and produced by Bradley Cooper (alongside producers Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese), follows the life of Leonard Bernstein (also played by Cooper) beginning from his rise to fame in the 1940s until his latter years in the late 80s. But Bernstein’s career, from his colossal splash leading the New York Philharmonic, to his Broadway musicals, movie scores, television appearances, and even his magnum opus Mass (1971) provide the mere backdrop upon which the true story unfolds.
This review contains some spoilers for the film.
The fulcrum around which Maestro rotates is Bernstein’s marriage to actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). True to Bernstein’s life, the film depicts his lovers before, during, and after his marriage as being mostly male, however, his relationship with Montealegre was one of true love and passion. That said, his same-sex dalliances open a rift between them. Felicia accuses him of being a kind of succubus who burns the candle at both ends by sucking the life out of everything and everyone around them. She seems to buy into the old biphobic trope of a bi man as a gay man in denial when she says, “If you’re not careful, you’re going to die a lonely, old queen.”
In her anger, Felicia forbids Bernstein from telling his daughter (Maya Hawke) about his bisexuality when she asks about rumors she’d heard. Bernstein swallows his pride and spins his daughter a yarn about malicious lies born out of envy. The look of sheer relief on her face at his words, and his corresponding expression of heartbreak is one of the most poignant scenes in the film.
Source: Netflix.
Bernstein’s sister, Shirley (Sarah Silverman), comes closest to understanding him when she assures Felicia that his love for her is genuine and describes him as a man “who cannot just be wholly one thing.” But even she surmises that “He’s just… lost.” Except he wasn’t.
For all their rough patches, Leonard and Felicia’s relationship comes full circle. In an iconic early scene (depicted in this review’s title image), the couple sit back-to-back in a field. In those days, early in both their romance and in Bernstein’s career as an internationally acclaimed conductor and composer, Felicia was his anchor. Many years later, shortly after they reconcile, Felicia is diagnosed with lung cancer. Bernstein drops everything to move back in and tend to her. His devotion is etched across every scene. At one point he orchestrates a charming mock wedding with the aid of his kids simply to break the tension of an awkward visit from well-wishers. The two find themselves, once again, sitting in the same field, in the same pose. This time, it’s Leonard holding up Felicia. The barriers that had driven them apart — namely, Bernstein’s affairs, and more specifically, the fact that they were with men — fell away.
The conflicts that Bernstein faces throughout the story are conflicts born of duality. We’re often told in life that we have to pick a side and stick with it. Those who either won’t or can’t tend to find themselves facing undeserved hostility from multiple directions. The centrist in a heated political discussion becomes a blank canvas upon which the left and right project negative assumptions. The interdisciplinarian in a room of specialists is regarded with dubious suspicion. And the bi person among gay or straight folks is often seen as someone living a contradiction they haven't the nerve to resolve. As Maestro artfully explores, a life free from the confines of binary choices can be liberating and joyful, but in a society locked in black-and-white thinking, it can also be a source of heartache and misunderstanding.
Souce: Netflix.
Asked in a television interview about the difference between the life of Composer Bernstein and Conductor Bernstein, Leonard answers that one must carry around both personalities. “I suppose that means you become a schizophrenic and that’s the end of it,” he jokes. This tension is integral to the narrative. Maestro is a film about a man both divided and whole — a writer and a performer, an introvert and an extrovert, a doer and a teacher, a trailblazer and a popularizer, a family man often living out of a suitcase, and an unabashed bisexual. The solitude of composing clashes with the adrenaline rush of conducting. His innovative work as an artist clashes with his more prosaic public outreach. And his quiet inner life clashes with his desperate need to be the life of the party. Through these pushes and pulls, Bernstein’s brilliance emerges.
Leonard is prone to self-deprecation, as when he playfully says to the infant child of his former boyfriend David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer), “Do you know I slept with both your parents? [...] I love too much, what can I say?” But both Cooper’s Bernstein and his real-life counterpart were as comfortable with their sexuality as anyone could be — and so apparently was his family. Indeed, the film has come under criticism from Bernstein’s children for playing up the drama stemming from his sexual orientation. His wife, they maintain, “knew exactly what the deal was” with his bisexuality.
Source: Netflix.
Other criticisms of the film have been altogether less serious, such as the fabricated controversy over Cooper’s use of a prosthetic nose (dubbed “jewface”). As a Jew myself, I found nothing remotely offensive about Cooper's appearance. In point of fact, the makeup in the film was some of the most outstanding I have ever seen, especially on the older Bernstein. And not just the makeup — many technical elements of the film, from the use of color, black and white, and texture, to the thoughtfully curated soundtrack drawn entirely from Bernstein’s own music, were masterfully executed. Whether or not the film will win Cooper his elusive first Academy Award remains to be seen (the film has “Oscar bait” written all over every frame), but as a document exploring bisexuality, it has intrinsic value regardless.
In some ways, Maestro taps into some of the biases that are still with us about bi men being overly promiscuous, in denial, or frustrated in their inability to “pick a side.” But it’s also a window into the past that throws into stark relief just how much progress we’ve made since Bernstein’s time. Bi folks, and bi men in particular, are far more visible today than they were in generations past.
Of course, Maestro exposes that this whole business of side-picking is an illusion of perspective and framing. It wasn’t that Leonard Bernstein couldn’t choose a side — he chose one loudly and emphatically; it simply wasn’t one of the two prescribed options recognized in that time and place. Some might describe that as not being “wholly one thing” and therefore inherently deranging, but the proof is in the pudding. The tensions and dualities troubling Bernstein resolved themselves. As with his multifaceted career, Leonard Bernstein’s incredible success and lasting influence were born not out of the sides he didn’t choose, but the sides he did.
Maestro (2023)
Rated R. Running time 2 hr 9 min. Watch on Netflix.
Published Jan 11, 2024
Updated Feb 5, 2024
