Bradley Cooper is a talented actor, and with his film Maestro (2023)—now streaming on Netflix—he has expanded his oeuvre. Cooper directed, co-wrote, and starred in a film about the American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. Any biopic is a grand undertaking for a director but Cooper’s efforts as both director and an actor (he plays Bernstein) are proof of his unique cinematic vision and abilities.
The work is unique partly because Maestro is not a linear, cradle-to-grave story. Rather, it focuses on the relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre Cohn (played with enchanting perfection by Carey Mulligan). Cooper singles out this strange marriage and weaves it throughout the story as the common thread that inevitably influenced Bernstein creatively.
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