The camera, like its subject, is hyperactive in Maestro. It swoops and pirouettes. It drops into the middle of frantic conversations, with barely a pause for breath as Bradley Cooper charms and dazzles as Leonard Bernstein. This is Lenny in his 1950s and 60s heyday, building a life with Felicia, played by Carey Mulligan. He is prodigious in both talent and appetite, a man of restless contradictions.
What there is very little of is music. We barely see him conduct, we hear only snatches of his own compositions, and there are frustratingly few glimpses of his passion for communicating – through performance and education – the wonders and riches of classical music. Which is why one lengthy sequence near the end of Maestro is so powerful. When we do finally see him conduct, leading a performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony in Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire, Cooper shows us how Bernstein becomes the music, and the music becomes him.
