Maestro

Bradley Cooper’s second film as director is an ecstatic, symphonic portrait of the composer/conductor Leonard Bernstein, with Cooper in the title role and Carey Mulligan as his wife, the actress Felicia Montealegre. Bernstein was bisexual, but like A Star is Born, Maestro is a searing love story caught up in an imbalanced relationship; Lenny loves Felicia almost as much as he loves himself, but she refuses to play second fiddle. Cinematically daring, musically exhilarating, and with two knockout performances, this is one of the films of the year.

Maestro is a stunning portrait of the artist as a charismatic narcissist in thrall to a marriage he believes in yet can’t completely live up to. Most of the music we hear is Bernstein’s own, and its astringent rapture is the soundtrack to his anguish and ecstasy… Cooper places himself on a high wire, working with a pointillistic intimacy that invests every moment with fascination and surprise.

Owen Gleiberman, Variety

An astonishingly beautiful film, by turns heartbreaking, tragic and tender, one that is fully constructed around two incessantly committed career-high performances.

Kevin Maher, The Times

Transfixing… As much as a tribute to Bernstein’s charisma and musical genius, this is a psychologically nuanced study of a love that didn’t conform to the standard rules of marriage but was no less binding. Cooper is terrific… Mulligan has never been better. Amplifying its force with thrilling use of the subject’s music… making you hear famous Bernstein works like his epic-scale Mass, his opera A Quiet Place or his magnificent overture to Candide as if for the first time.

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter