Maestro (2023)

Learning How to Conduct Yourself

or

Waiting in the Wings ("Any Questions?")

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.

Leonard Bernstein

I have a lot of favorite composers, but the one who always made music that brought tears to my eyes was Leonard Bernstein. There are sections of his score to On the Waterfront that does it, sections of "West Side Story", a recent viewing of Bernstein's "Mass" on PBS "Great Performances" did it to me, even though the thing was going right over my head. And it happened here, in this movie, in the end-credits without an extended segment of his "Candide." 

 

There are moments of great sublimity in Bernstein's music that you wonder that a human being could come up with something like that, tones and phrases so heavenly that they punch you right in the heart. And that he was able to write for theater, film, and the concert house is another of those un-ponderables. Add that he was not only a gifted composer, but also an outstanding student and interpreter of other composers' music, creating some definitive (to my ears, anyway) interpretations. And along with being a great student, he was a great teacher, becoming known for "Young Peoples Concerts" and lectures on "Omnibus". He was a genius, while acknowledging that word is so devalued these days.

But, the thing about geniuses is you never want to work for one. And maybe you don't want to become "involved" with them. Their work, their inspiration is an insular part of that person and sometimes it is a Rubicon you cannot cross. Bernstein was a great teacher, composer, conductor, but was also a celebrity, insatiably curious and had appetites. As Bernstein's sister (played imperiously by Sarah Silverman in the film Maestro) says: "There's a price for being in my brother's orbit..." That price is an isolation, that, although he may be a partner, he will never be a constant one (not that he couldn't be dedicated). He may be loyal, but by giving that loyalty is given permission to be disloyal. Mercurial, temperamental, capricious. Reliable, certainly to his craft and his art, but unreliable in his steadfastness and his exclusivity.

Maestro tells the story of the Bernstein-Montealegre marriage, which lasted 27 years until her death in 1978 (Bernstein died in 1990). And, interspersed with it are individual triumphs—Bernstein's star-making substitution for an ailing Bruno Walter conducting the New York Philharmonic (without any rehearsal) for a CBS Radio broadcast, his work making "On the Town," Montealegre's stage career, his work on the Mahler catalog—and disappointments, the most central of which was Bernstein's philandering with both men and women, as well as Montealegre's eventual death from cancer. It's staged as three acts (naturally), shot in different formats: the early years in academy ratio black and white; the troubled years of success—academy ratio color; Bernstein's life after Montealegre in wide-screen color. Why the marriage years are in the boxy square format and the solo years in wide-screen seems to be making a comment, but I haven't been able to come up with anything that doesn't seem to be in contradiction to the rest of the movie.

The film is centered by the performances of Bradley Cooper as Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegure—everybody else in the film are background characters, no matter how well-know (Comden and Green, Jerome Robbins, Aaron Copland), and the film revolves around them, sometimes literally. One's immediate impression is that Mulligan is doing some of her strongest work in years—until you realize that she's always been doing her hardest work. Cooper directed (and co-wrote the screenplay with Josh Singer) and he's given Mulligan and himself some pretty dexterous argument scenes where they're required to talk over each other incessantly and pausing only to spark off something the other person said. There's some deft timing done at high volume and dudgeon that's very impressive.

Cooper's performance is going to be the one that people will have an opinion on—as Bernstein was such a media presence that most people have an instinctive sense-memory about him—the make-up work is quite good with only moments of Cooper managing to emerge through it, and he's given Bernstein three distinctive voices for each section, products of a life-long cigarette habit and a cultivated life-style. I have the benefit of knowing someone who worked with Bernstein later in his life and they give Cooper high marks for his work citing "moments when you'd swear it was him" in postures and hand-work.* I will defer to them for any comments on his work, and will add that their impression of Bernstein—"casual" and "generous"—and that the film was far more honest than was expected.

As far as Cooper's direction, I found it interesting. He is not a great director for the poetic artistic shot, but he is a great director of sequences. After a prologue of the older Bernstein (in wide-screen), breaking down while performing a piano piece in front of the cameras ("So to answer your question, yes, I carry her around with me quite a bit"), the film cuts to black and white box as Bernstein gets his fateful call to conduct in 1943, and Cooper has Bernstein open his drapes, fly out of his room in his shorts and robe, opens a door in the hall and (wham) he opens it onto a balcony in a vast concert hall. The camera zooms out to the stage and a waiting podium, and then back to Bernstein, who turns on a dime and goes back through the door to emerge in a tux and make his grand entrance for the performance. It's very bravura (and all done to the heavy percussive part of Bernstein's On the Waterfront score).

And I began to worry: Is he trying to out-Spielberg Spielberg?** He's not—as the subsequent movie would show—it's just that he likes long "takes." In fact, it's amazing how long a scene will last without cutting away—those "argument" scenes are done in one shot.

Cooper will do a couple of other "showman" sequences during the "early days" sequences, but then he stops. Did he run out of energy? No, it's more a matter of putting the energy into the performances and letting the camera settle down as an uninvolved observer with merely a slow Barry Lyndon-style approach for comment. Those exuberant camera routines merely reflect the heady days of promising youth and endless possibilities...where you think you can do anything. And significantly, as things get more serious, Cooper's camera work gets more placid. Rather clever, that.

Oh, there's a fumble or two. A scene where a clearly cavalier Bernstein drives onto the family estate with his new lover in tow is overlaid with the sneaky opening bars of "West Side Story" and that's a little "on-the-nose." But, for the most part, the choices are good, sometimes surprising in their subtlety, and show a freshman movie-maker still learning some tricks and experimenting and seeing what the possibilities are in this train-set he gets to play with.

The film sets up a mystery with that opening Bernstein quote at the top of the page, and then, at key points, breaks a scene off with a final "Any Questions?" That's not much of a provocation, is dramatically awkward, and I'm not sure the movie fulfills its promise of demonstrating the tension between contradictory answers, so much as showing that any two human beings will have conflicts and must fight their inclination toward selfishness and ego (on both sides) in order to form a more perfect union. But, at least the movie is reaching, and exuberantly so, and Bernstein would appreciate that. He'd have hated a boring bio-pic, even if he had to look bad to get one.

In other words, the movie conducts itself well. Any questions?

* I made a remark that, unlike, say, Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line, Cooper's work was more imitation than performance and got the reply "Yeah, well, that's Lenny."

** Spielberg was going to direct Maestro, but an early peak at Cooper's rough cut of A Star is Born made him say "You should direct Maestro."

The Nice Guys

How Awful About Amelia
or
"Kids these Days..." ("Don't Say 'and stuff.' Just say, Dad, there are whores here.")

Shane Black excels at "buddy" movies—he did, after all, create the Lethal Weapon series. That's a good thing and a bad thing: when he does something like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, he comes up with a mystery, pushed off-kilter by the clashing personalities of his protagonists; when he does something like Iron Man 3 with a clearly dominant personality, the movie lurches out of control from its lack of counter-point. The Nice Guys has no such issues and actually improves on his formula.

I have to confess: any PI movie set in the 70's that starts out with the funk-shimmer of "Papa was a Rolling Stone" is already on my good side. When it establishes locale and detail by doing a rear-view fly-over of a decaying "Hollywood" sign to settle over a ranch-house in the valley at the base of that sign it shows someone is being careful with the atmosphere. Black follows the night-time perambulations of a child-denizen wandering the house who manages to score by finding a copy of dad's "Cavalier" magazine and then becomes distracted by a centerfold that he doesn't see a sports-car sailing off a cliff overhanging his backyard and bouncing through his house, you're seeing someone saying something about a world out of whack in the most surprising and arresting way possible.

And it keeps getting better.

Like most "buddy" movies, the two don't start as "buddies." Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is a lone wolf and is the muscle-arm of the detective business. People hire him to be tough and threaten. He's been at this long enough to have eliminated the tough stuff; the rules are simple: people are persuaded easier when they're hurting and it gives them to know that he is serious. Business rarely needs to be repeated. It is a bad side of the business, but he has a good side; he is recognized (when he is recognized, which is rarely) as "the diner guy" who disarmed a gun-man and beat him into unconsciousness with his own weapon. It made the news and it was good for business, if beating up people is your business. He does his work efficiently and with humor, even providing helpful medical advice to help with the future hospitalization. He's good at his job, but a bit of a troglodyte.

Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a widower with an 11 year old daughter in tow. He's the brains end of PI work, but that is being generalized and charitable. He specializes in the bizarre cases that most detectives would dismiss as a waste of time. Holland doesn't think it's a waste as long as money is being wasted his way. He has sharp instincts, but absolutely no physical skills and his mental facilities are being impaired by his habit of drinking himself into a stupor. The death of his wife has thrown him into an incapacitating depression, and it is only his caretaker-daughter Holly (Angourie Rice), 11 going on 35, that keeps him on his flat-feet and peeping.

Holland has been making the rounds, searching for Amelia (Margaret Qualley), a girl who has disappeared in the L.A. of 1977. It is not a good place, rife with crime, prostitution, porn and drugs—in other words, not unlike the Los Angeles of today, but with more water. Amelia is a typical missing-persons case, she's a headstrong runaway, privileged, entitled, mad at her mother (Kim Basinger) and determined to get back at her, how is anybody's guess. Holland does some interviewing at local clubs and bars, but Amelia is untraceable.

She should have asked Healy. Amelia has just hired him to beat Holland up and warn him off the case, breaking an arm that March has already bandaged from a breaking-and-entering gone wrong. He also gives a nice little back injury that, considering all the running around that goes on towards the end of the picture, seems to heal itself magically—either that, or he has wonderful muscle relaxants.

It is only when Healy is attacked in his office (above The Comedy Store, which is different) by a couple of toughs (Keith David, Beau Knapp) who are also looking for Amelia, that he begins to think that there may be more to this than just a simple thump-for-hire. Maybe March is working for the same guys who are threatening him or maybe not, but whatever the reason, Amelia seems to be a popular girl and Healy wants to find her so he can find out why he is also being threatened. Time to combine resources.

Back-track to March, who, understandably, is pained to have anything to do with Healy, but their mutual self-interest not to be shot persuades them to pool their resources Amelia-tracking and maybe find out who the people are who are targeting both of them. The two look for leads at a protest rally against L.A.'s smog conditions organized by Amelia and meet an acquaintance of hers named Chet (Jack Kilmer) a self-described "projectionalist," who takes them to the former residence of Amelia's boyfriend, "former" as it has recently been destroyed in a fire. The boyfriend's former employer was a porn producer who is hosting a party at his cliff-side mansion. 

It's an eventful party: March's daughter, Holly, stows away in the trunk of March's car, Healy runs into the toughs who roughed him up earlier, and March discovers the body of the porn producer, after drunkenly falling over a balcony railing and tumbling down the cliff. Oh, and they run into Amelia, who flees with Holly after being threatened by one of the thugs.

Things bump along, as the two detectives adjust to their working styles (or lack of them), just long enough to realize that they are out of their depth, the forces they're investigating being organized and a couple steps ahead of them, so that things get resolved but messily.

The movie is a bit shaggy-dog as far as clues-continuity—there are some leaps in logic and convenient encounters that only occur to you after the movie is over, as it entertains and Crowe and Gosling work overtime with a mis-matched relationship that, at times, recalls Abbott and Costello in their extremes (Gosling's March, when sober, has a funny coward's way of reacting to moments of stress)

Yes, that is a giant bee in March's back-seat, and, no, it's not a drug joke.

But, there's a nice through-line to the thing. The kids. While the adults are preoccupied with shuffling money around and their own narcissistic amoral short-term agendas, the kids are left to their own devices and having to make their way through, wondering if they have a future. The kids are alright, but they're judging, while the adults wander through the blighted glitz-scape accepting things for what they are, which is beyond their control. They've given up on the long-term, which, for the kids, hasn't even happened yet. 

And they're pissed. They're trying to understand the world they're growing into, to become adults, but they're getting the sense that their elders have given up on being adults themselves, so, if they're going to have any hopes and dreams besides having change in their pockets, they have no examples to look to. And feeling a definite disconnect with this L.A. world, like being little aliens in the landscape. No wonder they're insecure and going off the handle—no one wants to hold the handle! It's a latch-key world with deadbeat parents who not only do not care about doing the right thing, they've lost track of what that might be. In most of these "peeper" movies, it's the detective looking for answers who provides the moral center by his reactions to his discoveries. Not this movie. It's the kids, who are also looking for answers, who are the moral compass, pointing to true.

In most instances, the "kids are smarter than adults" trope comes off as precious or stupid, but The Nice Guys manages to make a great case for it, placing it in this genre, in this city, at this time. You tend to believe it. And wonder how they survived.

March demonstrates the "bad-breath tie" to Healy
(which sure looks improvised).