Are you trying? Bradley Cooper at the 2024 Oscars. Photo: Reuters
As the applause for Oppenheimer's lavish victory lap at the Oscars fades, think about Bradley Cooper's Maestro, which won exactly zero awards.
Leonard Bernstein's marriage, at first glance, has always been a more sophisticated subject for awards bait than the creation of the atomic bomb. Regardless, Netflix's roughly $80 million budget was certainly nothing more than the story Cooper wanted to tell about the legendary conductor's wild sex life and the demise of his wife.
Expectations for the production were sky-high: indeed, on paper, it was the best film of the year. The gradual erosion of the Maestro's hypothetical status — his relegation, if you will, to the role of a bridesmaid, obscured by flower arrangements — is the main tragedy of this season.
The production has a distinguished history that could be one long red carpet for trophies — not unlike the Best Picture winner Shakespeare in Love (1998), which was filmed in the late 1980s. The first director to take on Bernstein's project nine years ago was none other than Martin Scorsese, until he set his sights on The Irishman (2019) instead and handed the reins to Steven Spielberg.
Cooper was already set to play Bernstein, but Spielberg's other commitments began piling up. The story goes that a rough cut of A Star Is Born (2018), Cooper's wildly successful directorial debut, was screened in favor of Spielberg. About 20 minutes into the film, he turned to Cooper and whispered, «You're making this damn movie.» With this support, Cooper swung into action and cast Carey Mulligan, who was considered just as overdue for acting awards as the conductor's other half, Felicia Montealegre.
Both Scorsese and Spielberg remained on board as attached producers, which is a once-in-a-lifetime blessing and proves just how much of an impact this film had in the industry. But selling it to the public, as well as attracting the throngs of Academy voters it clearly hoped to impress, would prove much more difficult.
First, there was the nose. . Remember that fight? When the first Maestro trailer dropped last August, all anyone wanted to talk about was Cooper's prosthetic. It was huge. Was it… anti-Semitic? Twitter erupted with the usual combination of ridicule and outrage.
It took the support of the Anti-Defamation League to refute the idea, as well as the support of Bernstein's children, who said they were «absolutely happy» with the film's makeup choices and praised Cooper for involving them at every stage of the film's production. creative process. «We were deeply touched,» the trio said on Twitter, «to see the depth of his dedication, his loving embrace of our father's music, and the pure, genuine joy he brought to his research.»
No matter how sincere their enthusiasm may seem, it will never be good PR for any film if it has to fight a rearguard defense months before audiences even get a chance to look at it. The “Jewface” accusations were the first blow to the Maestro. Critical support since the film's world premiere in Venice has also been far from unanimous. There have been complaints about the film's timidity regarding sex, rather clunky structural decisions such as the cancer diagnosis at the end, with its disease-of-the-week TV movie atmosphere, and some exaggerated camerawork, particularly distracting early in the film. black and white sections.
Making stars: Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born, 2018 Photo: Neil Preston
However, films are much weaker, withstood much tougher critical tests and went the distance on Oscar night — such as Green Book (2018), which somehow beat out both A Star Is Born and its front-runner year, «Roma», in the nomination «Best Film».
< p>What Maestro lacked was the feel-good factor, the underdog factor or the element of surprise. Like Bernstein himself, he was easily criticized for his complacency—the feeling of knowing how good he was. Cooper worked as hard as ever on the campaign trail, but became a constant target of uncharitable snark that he was simply trying too hard, which is also what many people thought of the film.
Fascinating headlines began appearing long before nominations day: “The Maestro's Problem Is Bradley Cooper's Oscar Hunger”; “Bradley Cooper is too desperate to win an Oscar,” and so on. On the eve of the awards, when it was all but guaranteed he would lose, they were still at it: «Inside Bradley Cooper's desperate, dogged fight for Oscar glory,» the Daily Mail recently wrote.
When the media identifies an underdog who really wants to win, they show little mercy. The feud against Cooper began to take on a vicious aspect, ignoring his exceptional talent for detail — how dare he act so much, with so much makeup? His excessive seriousness in interviews, increasing when the death of Bernstein is mentioned; the mention of him banning chairs on set due to an «energy slump» made him look like the proverbial class dolt.
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Bradley Cooper choking on Leonard Bernstein
♬ original audio — film Maniacs
It's hard to understand how Rami Malek dodged these slings and arrows when he took all the prizes, beating Cooper to say the least for his infinitely less skillful — and truly humiliating — performance as Freddie Mercury. Perhaps Malek, being new to the Oscar-aspiring game, simply seemed less naked or less dated than Cooper, who is now approaching his fifth acting nomination, for a total of 12.
Mulligan's hopes of winning Reese Witherspoon — an Oscar for the wife rather than the musical genius himself, as happened in Walk the Line (2005) — began to fade as soon as Lily Gladstone and Emma Stone came out to claim their nominations this year. . She was always in the top five, but she was never a winner, baby.
For the second time, Cooper missed out on a best director nomination, a sign that that branch of the Academy hasn't yet backed him, even if the acting branch can't help but recognize his expertise. (He might have taken comfort in knowing that Spielberg was snubbed in Jaws, although he was still viewed with some suspicion as the new kid on the block.) Cooper couldn't shake the statistic that only twice in history have actors won an Oscar. for films. they themselves were directors — Laurence Olivier in Hamlet (1948) and Roberto Benigni in Life is Beautiful (1998).
Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre in the film Maestro. Photo: Jason McDonald
For the Maestro, nothing fell into place. Mainly, it had the misfortune of being pitted against another «great man» biopic set around the same time period, with similar adulterous affairs. But Oppenheimer had the advantage in many ways. It was the long-awaited Oscar from Christopher Nolan, and it wasn't on Netflix. The streamer has a history of failure, especially in the Best Picture race, missing out on films like «Roma,» «The Irishman» and «The Power of the Dog.»
Not only was Oppenheimer, unlike Maestro, a gigantic box office hit, it was partly a result of the «Barbenheimer» meme — never Nolan's favorite subject, but a huge windfall that allowed everyone to light up around it. This made a potentially taboo film accessible.
Cooper's meandering comment at the Best Actor roundtable, where he explained that the role of Bernstein required years of preparation, was taken as a rebuke of Cillian Murphy, who had only six months to figure out who J. Robert Oppenheimer was. But voters are just as likely to respect quicksilver versatility as hard-hitting footwork, and that's proven it.
Try hard? Bradley Cooper in Maestro Photo: Jason McDonald
Moreover, we come from The Maestro by mainly praising the artistic bravura of Leonard Bernstein; in Oppenheimer we delve into the man's doubts. It was shrewd of Nolan to make a picture for an exorbitant $100 million that was almost as studious and heavy, but with a core of moral uncertainty that bypassed any air of complacency.
The Maestro beat Oppenheimer to the punch that night. zero categories. The Oscar that should have ultimately gone to Best Makeup and Hairstyling ended up going to Bad Things. Which, frankly, doesn't seem fair. Mulligan and Cooper age and decline far more convincingly than, say, Murphy, Emily Blunt and others in Oppenheimer's final act. The astonishing scene of Bernstein, backlit and corpse-like, dancing in the twilight of his years at a sweaty rave represents stunning work from this team of masters.
Cooper's haters will surely talk about his supposed disappointment that he didn't even win this tournament. After all, he must have spent a lot of time in that makeup chair.
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