I finally got around to watching “Tár” the other night, and I have to say, the minute or two of Leonard Bernstein footage (from one of his “Young People’s Concerts”) that Lydia discovers on an old VHS tape in the closet of her childhood bedroom conveys more about the significance of the man and the artist than most anything on display in Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.” Not that I disliked “Maestro.” I warmed to it the more it progressed, and it gets better once Bernstein hits middle age.
Interestingly, both “Tár” and “Maestro” – but especially “Tár” – toss off a lot of musical allusions and in-jokes very few viewers in the broader audience are going to get. (Tar even makes a crack about Jerry Goldsmith!) Not that anyone needs to understand these things in order to grasp the larger points.
But “Maestro” in particular drops “Easter eggs” all over the place. I can’t believe Cooper bothered to incorporate whatever piece of Bernstein arcana he may have happened across on the internet. Unsurprisingly, there’s the performance of Mahler 2 in Ely Cathedral, but there’s also a recreation of the “Fancy Free” demo recorded for Jerome Robbins (complete with Copland interjections), and Bernstein showing up for a performance looking all the world like a stereotypical French wharf rat. I’m surprised he drew the line at the hilarious video of Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic with his eyebrows.
I understand that these are merely backdrop to a story about Bernstein’s complicated marriage to Felicia Montealegre, but it would have been nice to have seen a broader cultural understanding of what Bernstein signified as an artist. WHY was he so important? It all whirls by in such a blur that none of it has any resonance.
Much has been made of Kazu Hiro’s Academy Award nominated make-up, applied to suggest Bernstein at different stages of his life. I can’t say it necessarily makes Cooper look any more like Bernstein, particularly when young. It just looks like make-up. In fact, what it truly reminded me of was the kind of uncanny valley I used to experience when watching many of Martin Short’s impressions on SCTV. And all the make-up in the world is not going to distract a viewer from Cooper’s piercing blue eyes. All those hours in the make-up chair, and nobody thought to give him some contact lenses?
A few Baz Luhrmann-style excesses aside (as with the transparently computer-manipulated, vertiginous segue from Bernstein’s bedroom to the podium of Carnegie Hall, or the fantastic superimposition of the composer dancing around in a sailor’s outfit during a rehearsal of “Fancy Free”), “Maestro” works well enough. I just hope there’s another Bernstein movie down the line. There WAS one already in the pipeline – that would have starred Jake Gyllenhaal – but that got bumped when the Bernstein estate threw its weight behind “Maestro.” (I guess Gyllenhaal then thought it was a good idea to remake Patrick Swayze’s “Roadhouse?”) Or better yet, a Ken Burns-style documentary. Of course, a documentary probably wouldn’t attract the same crowd as Bradley Cooper.
One final disappointment – and it’s a big one: “Maestro” doesn’t use any of Bernstein’s actual recordings on the soundtrack!
I had my issues with “Tár,” too. Although both films are competently executed, and “Tár” aims higher than “Maestro,” there’s almost always something “off” about movies that purport to be about music or musicians. I get that the music is not really what either film is “about.” It’s just that film, by its very nature, is limited in its ability to convey the essence of music.
Of course, that applies to any other medium. A piece of music can no more depict a painting than a painting can depict a piece of music. Such translations may lend to our understanding, and even offer insights of their own, but they can never be more than approximations, interpretations of the original.
Too often filmmakers ramp up the external drama – of which, of course, there is often plenty – but they can’t put their fingers on the ineffable: what makes music count, why certain gifted interpreters are more successful than others at capturing our imaginations, and why any of it is important.