Netflix’s “Maestro”: what you need to know about the new Bradley Cooper movie

Under normal circumstances, no one begins their film’s promotional campaign expecting harsh criticism before its release. Bradley Cooper, after the fame of “A Star is Born”, his directorial debut, it is assumed that he would have everything in his favor to release “Maestro” in Netflix. The first part of the promotion consisted of launching the “look” of the film, photos showing him, who also stars, along with his fictional wife, Carey Mulligan; black and white photos, and one in color, that recreate another era. Only there was one detail for which the entire discussion of the film changed: the nose.

Produced by Cooper, Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, the film tells the life of Leonard Bernstein, an American conductor and composer whose talent crossed borders. Because of the character and his story, the film had everything to gain traction for the Oscars, but criticism of the protagonist’s nose set the tone of the conversation. In the film, Cooper wears a facial prosthesis on his face that enlarges his nose, something that, according to him, was to more faithfully represent the musician. The problem is that it could be interpreted as a caricature, which acquires another layer of complexity because the subject of the film is a Jew, a human group that for decades was represented in caricatures with that part of the face exaggerated.

“My nose is actually very similar to Lenny’s (Bernstein),” Cooper said in an interview with NBC to promote the film. “So the prosthesis is like a sheet of silk, and I thought ‘maybe we don’t need to do it,’” but in the end they did because otherwise, he insisted, the end result “didn’t look good.” Eventually, as the character ages on screen, the prosthesis comes to cover the entire face. Although criticism may point to the opposite, it is not an improvised work: the nose was created by Kazu Hiro, a practical effects expert and two-time Oscar winner.

But if you focus only on a leaf, you don’t see the tree. “Maestro” will be the story of Bernstein, but it is also the story of the 20th century, since the musician was an active part of multiple events. Not only was he conductor of the New York Symphony and composed the music for the theater classic “West Side Story,” he also made a speech in honor of John F. Kennedy, assassinated former president of the United States, who was the friend of he; He even appeared at an event regarding the fall of the Berlin Wall

“We musicians, like everyone else, are numbed by this murder and angry at the senselessness of the crime. But this lamentation and fury will not inflame us to seek revenge; instead it will inflame our art. Our music will never be the same. This will be our response to violence: to make more music, more intensely, more beautifully, more devoutly than before,” the musician said in 1963, just a few days after the president’s death.

On top of everything, his private life (whether he was gay or bisexual is up for debate) plays a role in how the film depicts his relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre. The epistolary correspondence between the two is widely documented, which gives greater solidity to the construction of the character. Cooper says that he was always passionate about music since he was a child, when he dreamed of being an orchestra conductor after seeing scenes of that type in cartoons. Perhaps that is why it is no coincidence that the two films he has directed so far, including this one, revolve around the auditory. Music, teacher.