Bradley Cooper is keeping an eye on his directorial debut A star is born with this bravura biopic of composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Focusing on the complex relationship between Bernstein (Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), the film is a consistently imaginative and often gripping portrait. Expect Oscar nominations. Many of them.
After a touching prologue in which an aging Bernstein tells an interviewer how much he misses his late wife, the film returns to 1943 and reveals Bernstein’s first moment of great success when he was asked to become conductor of the New York Philharmonic. , without trial, only 25 years.
It’s the first of several exciting creative directorial choices: Cooper asks Bernstein to answer the fateful phone call, then runs through his New York apartment straight into the concert hall as if he were in the next room. Bernstein later composed Do not be shy (ballet turned musical About the city) in the bathroom and imagines showing Felicia the dancing sailors before finally becoming one and joining them.
It’s an apt metaphor for the complexity of the central relationship, as their initial flirtation plays out in the sheen of 1940s comedy (enhanced by black-and-white photography and the old-fashioned aspect ratio that Cooper uses for Bernstein’s early years). Bernstein continued: He was attracted to men and had male lovers throughout his marriage. Felicia basically entered into this agreement with her eyes wide open.
Luckily, Cooper rejects the usual conventions of biopics and finds unusual ways to depict expected scenes. The climactic confrontation (a devastating sequence that will likely earn Mulligan an Oscar nomination) is shot from a seemingly odd angle, to delightful effect when the argument is interrupted by the sight of Snoopy’s giant hot air balloon flying past the window outside. , a refugee from the annual New York Thanksgiving Day parade.
Both leads are great: Cooper (exciting, unpredictable) isn’t afraid to make Bernstein downright unlikable at times, and Mulligan is absolutely heartbreaking as their arrangement finally takes its toll. This is not so much a biography about life and career – West Side Story was reduced to a few sentences – and the result was a more sincere and humane love story.
Source: I News
I am Mario Pickle and I work in the news website industry as an author. I have been with 24 News Reporters for over 3 years, where I specialize in entertainment-related topics such as books, films, and other media. My background is in film studies and journalism, giving me the knowledge to write engaging pieces that appeal to a wide variety of readers.