Best Actor 2023: Bradley Cooper in Maestro

Bradley Cooper received his fifth acting Oscar nomination for portraying Leonard Bernstein in Maestro.

Maestro is a so-called biopic of the famed American conductor/composer.

 

I'd like to point out the last time I reviewed Bradley Cooper, I thought he deserved both the leading and supporting wins that year, so I do believe the man has talent, but it is without apology for what I am about to do. There's a term originating from robotics called the uncanny valley, where one is disturbed by robots that look kind of like humans but are off in a way that is off-putting. Well here's the uncanny valley of biopic performances, where Cooper's approximation of Bernstein is off in such a way that penetrates the mind with just how bizarre of creation this hideous thing is. Let us speak of his speech as Bernstein which Cooper crafted for years apparently the vocal work of Bernstein, which is odd he took so long to get it wrong. Clearly Cooper saw Bernstein being interviewed by Edward R. Murrow for the basis, and unlike Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, who managed to notice that maybe someone's television manner is different from his personal manner, chose this to be the absolute truth of the man's voice and manner at all times. Of course, it would help if he even got that right, as his vocal performance is much too high pitched already for Bernstein, and he gets that even more wrong when he gets older. There's clearly effort here, that makes the failure of it all the more abundant, as he clearly believes he's playing Leonard Bernstein brilliantly, so much so that only with such confidence could you be as bad as a Cooper here is in playing Bernstein.
 

Take the near opening sequence where he answers the phone with his forced put on accent that conveys no emotion, no nuance, no anything but some phony attempt to be someone, sad when he isn't even convincing as such. What's weirder are his physical choices that basically stress an un-naturalism at every turn, where clearly Cooper has thought out every moment of an extra gesture or movement as we see Bernstein in his first major conducting gig. That's of course the problem as it becomes this pantomime act of a man giving a great performance, but again a false act of a great performance is not a great performance at all, in fact it seems the parody of such a performance. Speaking of performance, young Cooper apparently liked having fun doing fake conducting and that was apparently the impetus to make this film, and having watched it twice, I'm pretty sure that motivation never expanded as such as I think he wants to just wanted to conduct like Bernstein onscreen, which we see first in this sequence where never has raising hands seemed more unnatural. Cooper doesn't ease into an iconic stance, he already believes it to be iconic, that it feels more like a man posing to be covered in clay and made into a statue by how perfect it all clearly is already...according to him. There's the artifice that Cooper brings that constrains him and is bizarre with how much he refuses to find variation. As just take his voice, never has just the most rudimentary dialogue seemed so false because Cooper refuses to shift the accent even within emotion, making this aggressively stiff affectation rather than, you know, a human speaking.
 

Cooper's performance marvels in his ability to be phony in multiple ways, and while last performance I praised heavily for the use of one's eyes, I must do quite the opposite this time around by asking WHAT THE HELL IS HE DOING WITH HIS EYES? Where are your eyelids, man? Why are his eyes open as much as possible, as though he's constantly high on cocaine? I mean one can portray excitement in a way most humans do, not some psychopathic maniac, as I'm quite sure that is the choice Cooper makes every time we see Bernstein after a conducting job, seeing a friend, seeing his eventual wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan). I have to note the scene where Bernstein sees two friends and their child. Cooper perhaps has never been worse as he plays the whole scene not as a friend being jovial but a demented freak with every over the top line delivery and action that to describe as ridiculous would be an understatement, and one should never be understated when reviewing this performance...I mean Cooper wouldn't like that based on this performance. A performance without any internalization whatsoever, I'll admit Cooper doesn't help it with his own script that I'd say is razor thin but that's kind of an insult to the thickness of razors. As we see him in love with Felicia, which he portrays with the smile of a maniac, and what is the connection between them...I don't know. Nor do I sense it in the performance of Cooper, though I'll give credit to Mulligan for desperately trying. Cooper on the other hand conveys Bernstein as a man without depth, if he's happy all teeth like a horrible Halloween mask, if he's sad, his head is cocked down like he's Charlie Brown on a bad day, and in this instance Charlie Brown has done something VERY WRONG here, he made Maestro.
 

But hey, maybe when the film switches over to the older Bernstein and Felicia, the film comes together, we'll you'd be wrong. Cooper I imagine did watch Bernstein's interview, as wholly lifting quotes from the man and poorly contextualizing them is far too much the script, but I'd be baffled by his overly nasally vocal approach to older Bernstein, whose voice was much gruffer from his cigarette smoke, which hey that wouldn't matter if what he was doing was working in some way, but Cooper's vocal intonation seems more like the audition to do a Leonard Bernstein doll THAT TALKS, just pull the string. I mean but hey so far so stiff, but maybe we get the real him, when Bernstein is more himself by being a bi-sexual man, and he gets to follow more of his homosexual feelings. Well we see him interested in a man, which I know he's interested, not by any captivating conversation or even chemistry, rather just an onslaught of noise and overacting by Cooper in scenes that stretch what one might call scenes of dialogue. But maybe there's something in his distress as a man though, nah, just looking kind of sad I guess as he speaks of his regrets of not making enough music. But you can tell Cooper thought a lot about how he crosses his leg and holds his leg in a scene, a lot of time, so much time so that wonders what the point of any of it is? Well to so specifically construct the scene in an attempt I guess to high the void of nothingness that is the conversation as he blathers on as blathering, though in turn makes you just notice how every physical and verbal movement seems rehearsed, is rehearsed and makes you ponder what exactly is Cooper trying to accomplish. 

You know what though, what about the factor that apparently propelled Cooper to make this film, which is Bernstein being a conductor? I mean you can read about the hours upon hours of preparation by Cooper for this task, so it must be something special right? Wrong, though I should stop asking questions that are in fact going to answer. First a major missed opportunity is seeing Bernstein work through his musical performances, as one can see Bernstein do in a somewhat tyrannical way in any actual footage of the man, but why would you want actual footage when you have Cooper? Whoops. Well Cooper would then need to bother to explain the genius of the man musically, which I guess was too much of a challenge so instead we just get the man saying a few random phrases without any real direction or intention, as this Bernstein is magically ready for every performance. Which again forget the writing though, what does Cooper do in these moments, well in the opposite direction of too much rather than too little. I'd say he's overcompensating for the weak script, but that's not much of an excuse when he wrote the damn thing. The much lauded Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C-minor, which makes me question many's opinion since it is this triumphant moment that isn't attached to anything and if you think it's powerful it is because you think the music is powerful, because Cooper recreated a youtube clip and little else. Well just one more thing, and one can see Bernstein's method of conducting which was wild and over the top in his extremely expressive way of conducting....and Cooper managed to do the unthinkable which was to actually be more over the top. And here's why, where when Bernstein went wide with his arms, and opened his mouth, you felt he was reflecting his emotion from the music into the action, Cooper's is this bizarre puppet act of the movements and behaviours without the emotions. He's doing them, though always just a little more than the real man which would be impressive if it weren't so ludicrous, but also doing them, because he did them, there's no sense of the why, it just is, and as just is, it is nothing. 

But maybe the last stage relationship saves it all....not bloody likely. I must focus too much on a singular moment for a moment, which is Leonard and Felicia at a concert where he pays more attention to his male companion than to his wife. Cooper manages to overact with his thumbs HIS THUMBS, twiddling them in a way that somehow feels performative, rather than just nervous twitching, how does one do that, but as the great Ian Malcolm would say "Life, uh, Finds a Way", and I'd say Cooper found a way. As much as we learned about their budding relationship we learn even more about the strain of their late relationship, and by more mean exactly the same, and by much I mean nearly nothing. We do get a scene of couples fighting, that is the version of the Marriage Story fight scene that some parts of the internet thought they saw, as this version has nearly as little context as a broken off clip on the YouTube. It does give us the chance to see Cooper practice his portrayal of a chicken pretending to be a human in the way he moves around the room in the scene, and he does raise his phony Bernstein voice to a setting called frustrating, kind of. It's pseudo-emotion in that it has the traits of emotions, but not that thing called actually feeling them. Cooper's work is just one dishonest moment after another in this bizarre caricature of a man, except for about 30 seconds of his performance. Which is the one scene that makes me feel anything, though this is largely due to Mulligan and I do think it falls into drowning man syndrome where you'd take even dirty air if you can breathe, where Felicia is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Which on re-watch, isn't really particularly notable either, it's just less empty, but not really all that much less. You still get plenty of prancing around from Cooper, even his big scene of screaming his pain into a pillow still feels performative in a moment where honesty needed to be the truth. Although I'll give the minor bit of credit in the scene where Bernstein climbs into bed with the dying Felicia. In this moment Cooper drops all pretense and you see a glimpse of the actor he actually can be as he seems finally focused on his co-star and not on crafting his artificial image of representation to the audience. Cooper relaxes for the only moment of his performance as he embraces Mulligan and for a moment seems actually in the scene, and allows us to see a person not some empty representation. Although this 30 seconds does not save his performance in the slightest, rather it shows just what is wrong with his performance. Something we immediately see as we go ahead one more time for oldest Bernstein where Cooper is right back to just one false choice after another, that creates an image, not even an idea, but most certainly never a man. This is perhaps an ideal cautionary performance on award chasing as the film and the performance have so many of the surface traits of a great performance or a great film, traits though of a perfunctory description, lacking the actual context, depth or understanding needed. Cooper can be great, but this is a series of choices attempting to achieve greatness that only result in failure.