TALES OF LOHR: "MAESTRO"
My thoughts on Bradley Cooper's musical biopic; plus, "Factory Roll Call" tips the cap to a Warholian matchmaker
People are not easy. Love is not easy. Even the simple act of being purely and honestly oneself is something that has baffled us for centuries. I have now logged four and a half decades on an increasingly impossible planet as a member of an ever more intractable species, and in no way can I profess any flawless facility for any one of this trio of challenges. These are the titanic themes, framed against one of the most remarkable careers in the history of twentieth-century music, tackled by Bradley Cooper in Maestro. In addition to stepping behind the camera for his sophomore go-round after the 2018 multi-Oscar-nominated box-office hit A Star is Born, Cooper once again co-writes (with Josh Singer, himself an Oscar winner for 2015’s Spotlight), co-produces (alongside, among others, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, the latter of whom was at one point on deck to direct), and stars, not without a touch of controversy, as the legendary American composer / conductor Leonard Bernstein in a film that digs, deeply and with a consistent if not flawless degree of insight, into the complexities of his turbulent marriage to actress / singer Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan).
Or, as some have more cynically put it, Bradley Cooper must really want that Oscar.
Of course, Cooper has been nominated for nine Academy Awards up to this point without a victory (a third of those nods for A Star Is Born alone), so one can maybe forgive him for feeling at least a tiny bit due. Plus, one gets the impression from Cooper, as a screenwriter / film educator colleague of mine recently asserted in a discussion of this film, that there is a genuine earnestness to his filmmaking efforts. Someone whose first stab at directing is a threemake starring a pop singer who’s never acted before, with supporting roles by Andrew Dice Clay and Dave Chappelle, can hardly be accused of simply pandering for Oscar gold. And even if Maestro is a far more obviously accolade-ready effort, that shouldn’t be meant to suggest that the film exists simply for the sake of cleaning up on awards night. Indeed, the film Cooper has created here is more understated and abstract, and less user-friendly, than what one would be expected to put forth simply if Oscar statuettes were the only endgame.
Indeed, for the first half hour or so, I found myself feeling somewhat frustrated by Maestro’s unexpectedly oblique approach to the development of the relationship between Bernstein and Montealegre. We see Bernstein first capturing the public imagination when a last-minute, no-rehearsal fill-in conducting gig at Carnegie Hall wins him wide acclaim when it’s broadcast on radio; we see him beavering away at early compositions with collaborators like choreographer Jerome Robbins (with whom he would work on both On the Town and West Side Story); and we experience the optimistic-idealist flush of his burgeoning romance with Montealegre, whom he is introduced to at a party by his sister Shirley (a dry, subtly in-period turn by Sarah Silverman) and who he charms with his obvious talent and quick wit. A little too quick, honestly, as Cooper and Mulligan, in these black-and-white scenes lushly lensed by A Star is Born’s Matthew Libatique, lean so hard into the His Girl Friday pace of their patter that it is at first hard to keep up with the progress of their connection. Cooper also uses this early going for some of his showiest look-at-me technical gambits, such as a part of their courtship playing out as a dance number cribbed from Robbins’ On the Town choreography, that arguably get a little in the way of initial emotional clarity.
But this sequence is valuable in its incorporation of the first major wrinkle into Bernstein and Montealegre’s eventual marriage: Bernstein’s bisexuality. Before Montealegre even enters the scene, we have seen Bernstein enjoying a dalliance with clarinetist and later TV producer David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer), and he makes clear to Montealegre both his democratic sexual tastes and his intentions to continue these explorations once they’re married. Montealegre, well aware of the expectations of one’s membership in her bohemian sophisticate’s cultural circle, does her best to take Bernstein’s infidelities in stride. But when things get “messy” and Bernstein becomes increasingly cavalier in the public-facing nature of his affairs with men, Montealegre can no longer abide all in the name of being “with it.” (I found myself thinking a lot during the film of the collapse of the relationship between Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, another showbiz couple whose “Oh God, I’m Sophisticated” mien ultimately couldn’t save them from the heart, and other unpleasantly Allenesque organs, wanting what they wanted.) It also doesn’t help that people’s kids are starting to hear rumors and repeating them to the couple’s eldest daughter Jamie (Maya Hawke). Montealegre further chafes at being increasingly overshadowed by the demands of Bernstein’s fame, and what she perceives as his own insecurities keeping him from pushing his compositional gifts to their true potential. And all of this before a health crisis that tests the marriage of this already tempest-tossed couple like nothing that has come before.
Cooper and Singer’s screenplay wisely avoids much of the soapy potential of this inherently melodramatic material, arguably leaning at times too far into an almost overly subdued approach perhaps better suited to literature. Bernstein’s extramarital relationships, particularly with Gideon Glick’s eagerly youthful Georgie, are handled glancingly, a hair caress here, a back-to-the-camera kiss there, and while similar affairs for Montealegre are implied, the implication is all that gives these relationships even a hint of narrative presence. But Cooper’s direction, once it settles down from the effusive feints of the early scenes, carries that sense of understatement into the film’s latter half with impressive impact. A Thanksgiving Day confrontation between the under-strain couple plays out in a surprisingly effective single-take master shot, the hostility beautifully punctuated by the surreal effect of Macy’s parade floats and balloons occasionally passing by their apartment windows. The boxing out of Montealegre from Bernstein’s increasingly celebrated career is conveyed via another simple long take, this one of Mulligan walking away down a theater lobby, a clamoring, flashbulb-popping crowd around Bernstein jamming the frame to her left. Even a pivotal third-act moment of reckoning for a beloved character is handled with nary a word of dialogue, all conveyed through image, body language, and the tasteful deployment of the Bernstein music that fills the soundtrack.
But when it’s time, Cooper likewise proves capable of swinging for the fences, as in the film’s arguable audiovisual highlight, a recreation of Bernstein conducting Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at London’s Ely Cathedral in 1973. In preparation for this film, Cooper trained for six years in the art of conducting, working primarily with Metropolitan Opera principal conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and this sequence, again shot in largely long takes, is where that work pays off. Cooper nails the explosive body language, the impressionistic gestural grace notes, the emotional overwhelm of Bernstein behind the baton, and it is a testament to the truth that acting can be about so much more than just the recitation of dialogue. It is the capstone of Cooper’s highly committed and mostly effective performance. This is as hard as he’s ever leaned into a character actor’s territory, and while I did sometimes find myself jarred by his very specific recreation of the middle-aged Bernstein’s rather nasal speaking voice, he is never off the emotional mark, and keeps a steady hand on the tiller of a character it might have been easy to overplay. (And speaking of nasal, much has been made of the Gentile Cooper’s wearing a prosthetic nose to play the Jewish Bernstein, but I honestly was more distracted, in the later scenes, by his unexpectedly intense-looking winters-in-Palm-Beach perma-tan.) Mulligan has an even better grasp on the period-specific technical dynamics of the role, handling her own tricky accent with ease and masterfully managing the nuances of an upper-crust mid-20th-century woman’s style of verbal presentation. (Listen to her elegant way with the dialogue in a restaurant confrontation scene with Hawke; I was simply awestruck by how she handles her voice like a surgeon’s tool.) She is also entirely on emotional point, as skilled with a savage cut-down, threatening Bernstein with the possibility of his dying a “lonely old queen,” as with the sheer raw gravity of her climactic onscreen moments. While Bomer, Silverman, and Hawke all contribute nice supporting work here, this is really Cooper and Mulligan’s show, and they make Bernstein and Montealegre’s relationship, which could not have been easy to endure, ultimately rewarding to watch.
So…is Maestro finally going to make Bradley Cooper an Oscar winner? Hard to say. He’s certainly racking up nominations, as is Mulligan, and a reasonable enough case is to be made for a Cooper victory in almost every category in which he will contend. But awards victories or no, Maestro is to be appreciated for the sincerity Cooper brings to the material, the honesty with which he and Mulligan evoke their roles, and the film’s willingness to never deliver a clean catharsis straight across the plate. Maestro is as willing to whipsaw one’s emotions as the color-shifting movements of a grand symphony, and when it most counts, the film delivers its crescendos with confidence and a commendable lack of bathos. This is something arguably more important than an Oscar sure thing: A second feature that avoids the dreaded sophomore slump.
FACTORY ROLL CALL
LESTER PERSKY (1925 - 2001)
In the middle of February 1965, at a midtown Manhattan party celebrating the birthday of the great playwright Tennessee Williams, Andy Warhol was introduced to a California native, a New England old-money heiress with a checkered family history and a resume that included stints in psychiatric facilities, who had recently arrived on the New York social scene after a hard-partying stint at Harvard. Warhol was immediately struck by the young woman’s beauty, captivating personality, and apparent emotional instability, and by the fall of that year, the Pop artist and Edie Sedgwick, the woman he met at that midtown celebration, had been forged in the public imagination as a sort of royal couple of the emerging underground.
The apartment that hosted that Tennessee Williams birthday party was owned by a friend of Warhol’s, the man who likewise introduced Edie and Andy that night: Former advertising executive and film / TV / stage producer Lester Persky.
A Brooklyn native, Persky matriculated at the city’s eponymous college before joining the Merchant Navy during World War II. After the war, he took on gigs with the New York Times and an advertising agency, where he parlayed his experience as a copywriter into eventual ownership of his own ad house. Naturally, through the small-world nature of the New York ad game, Persky became an acquaintance of Andy Warhol, who throughout the 1950s and on into the early ‘60s was one of the city’s most sought-after advertising illustrators. The two enjoyed an easy camaraderie within the city’s increasingly bohemian nightlife, and Warhol would eventually use several Persky-produced TV commercials as linking material in the bizarre 1964 daytime-drama travesty Soap Opera (aka The Lester Persky Story).
Persky would continue his media diversification with a late-’60s shift into theatrical production, being instrumental in bringing Williams’ play A Slapstick Tragedy to the Broadway stage. Film soon beckoned, and Persky was an associate producer of 1968’s high-budget critical and box-office failure Boom! (based on a screenplay Williams adapted from his own play The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore). Persky dabbled into Warholian themes of homosexuality and sex slavery in his first feature as a full-fledged producer, Fortune and Men’s Eyes (1971), and his subsequent feature producer credits included the Oscar-nominated Equus (1977) and the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Hair (1979), nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Picture - Musical / Comedy. In 1973, Persky co-launched the Persky-Bright Organization, a film financing company. He and his partner, Richard S. Bright, were instrumental in financing several major films of the mid- to late ‘70s, including The Last Detail, Shampoo, The Man Who Would Be King, and the Best Picture Oscar-nominated Taxi Driver.
In the 1980s, Persky ventured into television production, largely focusing on mini-series and special TV event programming. In 1988, he produced a Farrah Fawcett-starring limited series about the tragic Woolworth’s heiress Barbara Hutton, Poor Little Rich Girl, a title it shares with one of Andy Warhol’s best-known films starring Edie Sedgwick. The mini-series won three Emmys, and in 1992, the Persky-produced A Woman Named Jackie, about the life of the former First Lady and frequent Warhol portrait subject, likewise took home an Emmy trophy, this one for the year’s best overall mini-series. To complete this trio of Warhol-reminiscent TV projects, 1995 saw the airing of Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story. Persky was the executive producer of this mini-series, which centered on the tabloid-ready life and glittering career of the most frequent Warhol portrait subject of them all.
Fans of the films of Andy Warhol obviously owe Lester Persky a great debt for his introduction to the Factory scene of arguably the greatest of Warhol’s superstars. But one quick glance at his resume, and it’s clear that lovers of prestige TV drama and classic ‘70s cinema owe Persky even more.
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