Bradley Cooper enjoyed a monster critical and commercial hit with 2018’s A Star is Born, which he directed and starred in, playing an alcoholic country and western crooner, opposite Lady Gaga. How on earth, observers wondered, was he going to trump that success? Five years on, Cooper is directing and playing the lead in another fine music-based project, albeit one very different in tone. Maestro is a biopic of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, the man who brought us West Side Story and On the Town.
The film arrives trailing controversy in its wake. Cooper, a non-Jewish actor, has been excoriated in the media for wearing a prosthetic nose as Bernstein. It was naive of him not to have anticipated the furore his make-up was going to cause. Nonetheless, no one who sees the film will argue that this is anything other than an affectionate portrait. Cooper is effortlessly charming as the musician, playing him as a gregarious and lovable figure whose face seems to be fixed into a near-permanent smile.
