Maestro

Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein film is much less a musician's biography than a film about a marriage. The centre is Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre, and Carey Mulligan's performance shifts the film's weight so far toward her that many critics called her the best thing in it. Cooper spent six years learning to conduct, and did it for a single six-minute scene: the finale of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral with the London Symphony Orchestra, played live and captured in one unbroken take. The image moves from black and white to colour as the eras change. The controversy started when set photographs appeared in May 2023 and Cooper's large prosthetic nose raised the question of whether a non-Jewish actor should be wearing one. The Bernstein family defended him, saying their father would have approved. The Anti-Defamation League distinguished the film from antisemitic caricature, and makeup artist Kazu Hiro explained the aim was a hybrid of Bernstein and Cooper rather than a mask. Who it is for: viewers who want to look inside a marriage more than a career. Who it is not for: anyone expecting an orderly account of Bernstein's political and professional life, which the film almost entirely skips.