"If summer doesn't sing in you, then nothing sings in you. And if nothing sings in you, then you can't make music."
—Felicia Montealegre
Maestro is a 2023 biography film directed and co-written by Bradley Cooper, his second film as a director following 2018's A Star Is Born.
Cooper stars as Leonard Bernstein, with a focus on his marriage to Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). It also chronicles his career, from his audacious start as a young conductor of twenty-five through his changing of musical theatre with On the Town, Wonderful Town and West Side Story, as he copes all the while with his tortured need for fame and affection and his closeted bisexuality.
The supporting cast includes Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke, Sarah Silverman, Michael Urie, and Brian Klugman.
Maestro contains examples of:
- Aspect Ratio Switch: The intro and outro are shot in widescreen 16:9, but the bulk of the film is in 4:3 full screen.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Even as his marriage to Felicia becomes increasingly strained, it's clear that Leonard still cares about her very much and that she is the great love of his life. He takes care of her the whole time after her cancer diagnosis and admits to a television crew interviewing him that he misses her terribly following her passing.
- Bathos: One of the film's most memorable moments is, after Leonard and Felicia's argument during Thanksgiving about their marriage—an explosive, no-holds-barred affair where both sides, especially Felicia, viciously tear into each other—a giant Snoopy float, part of the year's Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, passes the window of their apartment, highlighting the absurdity of the situation that Leonard and Felicia have found themselves into.
- Behind Every Great Man: Felicia is shown to have this sort of presence in Leonard's personal life, serving as a stabilizer for him and trying her best to keep him and their marriage in check, and it's made clear that he'd be much more self-destructive were it not for her. Case in point, he practically falls apart after she dies.
- Blatant Lies: After Jamie hears rumors of her father's repeated dalliances with younger men, Leonard has to sit her down and tell her that they're not true and that it's just gossip fueled by jealousy. Deconstructed: it's clear that having to say such a shame-faced lie to his own daughter is something incredibly painful for him.
- Call-Back: Felicia's quote at the top of the page is repeated by Leonard at the end of the movie after Felicia has died.
- Dies Wide Open: Felicia's last breath is taken while she is looking outside the window.
- Foreshadowing: Felicia warns Leonard that if he keeps acting out he will die a lonely old queen. Following Felicia's death, he is shown in The '80s as an overweight old man attempting to still cavort with college students.
- Genre Throwback: The black-and-white portion chronicling Leonard and Felicia's romance is meant to hearken back to the grand romantic dramas of The Golden Age of Hollywood.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When Felicia talks to Leonard's sister about her troubled marriage to Leonard, the camera focuses entirely on Felicia's face as she speaks, giving the sense that she's giving a monologue directly to the audience.
- Lohengrin and Mendelssohn: After Betty recounts an incident in which Felicia mockingly said of Lenny at a bar mitzvah "And here comes the bride", Lenny actually starts playing it on the piano, resulting in their kids doing a mock procession.
- Mamet Speak: Characters will frequently interrupt or talk over each other during conversations, best shown during Leonard and Felicia's explosive argument on Thanksgiving where neither of them can get a full sentence in most of the time.
- The Oner: Used often, albeit subtly, throughout the film, with many single shots going on for a minute or longer. Special note goes to the seven-minute scene of Leonard conducting an orchestra at the Ely Cathedral in England, shot in one impressive long take.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Felicia gives a particularly vicious one following one of Bernstein's all-night benders, which leads to his almost missing Thanksgiving. She highlights his need for attention and just how sloppy he has gotten with his extra-marital affairs.
- Rule of Pool: The Bernstein family pool is eventually put to use when Felicia, fed up with Leonard's inattentiveness, jumps in fully clothed when he sweeps in having completed his latest opus.
- Something Something Leonard Bernstein: The lyric from "It's the End of the World as We Know It" by R.E.M. plays as Bernstein drives up to the Tanglewood Music Center in the end.
- Suspiciously Apropos Music: A subtle example, but Leonard and Felicia rekindle their relationship after the long sequence of Gustav Mahler's second symphonynote .
