Most people have come to agree that “Maestro” is an “Oscar bait” movie. Bradley Cooper pushed his “method methods” and talked incessantly about what it was like to direct, write and star in the film in hopes that he might finally get his first golden statue. And did it work? No. But did we at least get a good movie? Let’s discuss.

Maestro is a movie about Leonard Bernstein (played by Bradley Cooper), mainly focusing on his relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegre (played by Carey Mulligan), his kids, and his affairs with other men. In the background of the family drama, the film goes through Bernstein and his wife’s ascent to fame.

Here’s the thing: Bradley Cooper is actually a pretty good director. He knows what a good shot looks like, and the color grading of the film is fantastic. It works for the time period and the simultaneous intimate extravagance the story is trying to achieve. 

But most of the film feels like Cooper is directing just to get a pretty shot, even if it makes no sense for the scene. He films everything at a weird angle, from way too far or way too up close, in black in white or in a different 1:33:1 frame, diverging from the more common rectangular frame, just to get a “cool shot”– regardless of how it works in the scene. 

A great example of where his directing technique really falls flat is when he films a scene of two characters talking or arguing from way too far away—so far away that you can barely hear them—and then just leaves the camera there. Still.

This technique could work if its purpose was that we feel like an audience in these super famous characters’ lives, but instead it just makes us feel disconnected from the characters. All the important scenes lack the intimacy they need to give heart to the characters. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bradley Cooper said to himself, “I’m not gonna do one straight shot this entire film,” and boy did he succeed. 

That being said, Cooper actually has a lot of potential. The movie is filled with beautiful shots, Cooper just needs to move the camera and let a shot be simple; intimate scenes should not be flooded with theatrics.

The writing, unfortunately, has fewer points of redemption. To put it plainly, the screenplay is bad. Period. The plot and pacing honestly make no sense and sentence level, the conversations don’t feel real—not in the poetic Tarantino way, but in the pretentious film student way. I know those sound like the same, but they’re not. 

Moreover, the exposition is overdone and feels unnatural, the dialogue is too formal, and all in all, nothing really works. Again, this would make sense if his goal was to force us as the audiences peering into a famous story. However, that technique should be saved for a couple scenes, not the entire movie. Literally, the entire movie.

Luckily, the acting in “Maestro” is fantastic. At first the performances seemed too formal and unnatural, but as the movie progressed, I understood that this was due to the screenplay. Considering the base point these actors were given, the performances brought through from all the characters are incredibly impressive. Carey Mulligan is brilliant as Bernstein’s wife Felicia, Bradley Cooper is great, though a little over the top with his method acting (seriously, did you need to learn composing for six years?), and side characters did consistently, very well. No complaints here.

Overall, the movie feels like a film student’s first attempt at an arthouse film, if their first attempt had an 80 million dollar budget. There’s potential, but it takes itself too seriously and tries too hard (pretty emblematic of Cooper’s Oscar race). I can sum up my criticism in one note to Bradley: you’re doing too much! Move the camera, and let us in the room!

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Cinematic is a movie review column currently published a series on each of the 2024 best picture nominees. To access more reviews, click the “Cinematic” tag below.