Maestro (2023) was easily my favorite of these three films, perhaps because of my previous familiarity with Leonard Bernstein’s works (like West Side Story and Candide). Loosely following Bernstein’s (Bradley Cooper) career from his first big conducting gig at age 25, the movie is much more interested in Bernstein’s relationship to his wife, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), and his complicated personal life as a queer man. This is to the movie’s benefit, as Bernstein’s career provides a rich backdrop to the tension that quietly grows in, around, and between members of his family. Early on, Felicia tells Leonard that she sees him for who he is, and that she is ok with it. They appear to have an agreement where he can seek out the pleasures he pleases; Felicia seems to agree to sharing. But when Leonard gets more overt with his transgressions, and the tide turns from sharing to being forgotten, Felicia understandably takes issue with what the status quo has become. The tension simmers in near silence – with the occasional verbose explosion – as Leonard refuses to formally reconcile until it is too late.

Serving as lead actor and director to this production, Bradley Cooper does a phenomenal job in his portrayal of Bernstein. Though there has been some backlash about the prosthetic work done to improve his likeness to the real Bernstein, the hair and makeup team on this movie deserve a huge amount of accolades for their accomplishments here (confirmed by their own Academy Award nomination); not only do they transform Cooper’s face, but they also subtly (and then all at once) age both Cooper and Mulligan across the decades of their relationship with work that is utterly convincing. The actors (again, both nominated for Academy Awards in their respective categories) take the transformative tools that they have been given and use them to craft performances that are entirely gripping; a Thanksgiving Day argument between the two is so real that it’s almost tempting to turn away out of embarrassment for having witnessed something so private. The screenplay and direction of its delivery are reflective of lifelike conversation – characters talk over one another, cut one another off, and quickly interject, and while this can get overwhelming, so can real conversations. It smudges the sheen of perfection that a lot of dialogue tends to have, and instead opts to lean into the imperfect mess that real communication can become, especially when love is involved. In a nice touch of stylistic intent, just like the makeup and the performances reflect the passing time, so to do the visual period pastiches – the film moves from a 4:3 aspect ratio in black and white to a widescreen format in full color, reflecting the film style of the time, and earning another Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.