A really boring, surface level exploration of one of the more interesting musical figures of the 20th century. It makes the classic biopic mistake of retelling the subject’s life through bullet points instead of providing a unique artistic perspective or insight. The writing is so flat and just doesn’t seem to get at the heart of anything that could be memorable, which is strange because there’s potentially so much to work with. I’d welcome a movie that gave us a look into Bernstein’s artistic process/contributions or outspoken, opinionated mind, but so much of this feels like a calculated vanity project for Bradley Cooper. Carey Mulligan is the only one who completely disappears into her role in a way that feels authentic, because the other performers are a little too eager to ham it up for Academy Awards voters. You can tell Cooper did a lot of research for his role, but there’s something about his performance that feels phony and too studied. Thankfully he does a better job in the director’s chair, because in terms of visuals, editing and staging this is an improvement over _A Star is Born_. The score is often pompous and overblown (not counting the conducting scenes, of course), but I’ll give him a pass on that one because we’re dealing with a classical composer here. He even occasionally flirts with subjective abstractions (e.g. the scenes that refer back to the silent film era), however in the grander scheme of things those moments feel isolated and disconnected from the rest of the film. It’s strange how you can always feel his adventurous spirit behind the camera, but the movie as a whole never stops feeling like hollow Oscar bait. Compared to a movie like _Tár_ there’s a strong argument to be made how writing fiction can loosen the creative restraint for a writer. Because of that I honestly don’t get why there’s still such a strong emphasis on the biopic in awards circles, and no movie from 2023 exemplifies that better than _Maestro_.

4/10