Last edited Wed Dec 27, 2023, 09:48 AM - Edit history (2)

"A Beautiful Mind"
"Capote"
"Hidden Figures"
"Milk"
"The King's Speech"
"Catch me if You Can"
To name a few.

but overall I thought it was well done. The acting was excellent.

Disjointed

was absolutely dreadful.

Mahler's 2nd, recorded at Ely Cathedral. Blew me away.

To me, it was more of a character study than a biopic. And I found him pretty unlikable. A philandering, egomaniac. The acting was excellent although I though Bradley Cooper sounded like he needed to blow his nose. And it would have been refreshing to see a scene where he where he didn't have a cigarette in his hand. I guess I'd give 3 out of 5 stars.

in his hand unless he was conducting. Bradley Cooper involved Bernstein's children and they are happy with his portrayal and the film as a whole.

personal life. I always appreciated his talents, but never liked him in interviews etc.

Curiosity got the better of me and I watched it, wondering how much whitewashing would be applied.

The one surprise to me was regarding his family life, eg how many children he had, and I didn't know his wife was from South America.
I thought the acting was well done, but yeah don't know how much of the screenplay was edited out, but it sure seemed like a lot must have ended up on the floor and dust bins.

I know part of my disinterest is I have a hard time liking any Bradley Cooper character but mainly the movie, while it seems well done, just screams "For Your Consideration."

In the black-and-white scenes, there were a lot of attempts at art-house noir, and I kept saying to myself, that shot's Welles, or that one's Carol Reed, or this is Fellini or Bergman. After a while, the Wellesian influence, especially the characters constantly talking over one another, bordered on parody and my annoyance with the prosthetic nose, so unnecessary and distracting, reminded me that Welles himself was known for always wearing a prosthetic nose in his roles because his real nose was so small and undramatic. Was Cooper trying to emulate the great director? Keep an eye out for whether he starts doing commercials for wine or frozen peas.

Fundamentally, I feel I know nothing about Bernstein from all this. The guy was a musical genius but there's no attempt here to illuminate why, or to really connect the frenetic, nasally voiced character on the screen with the gorgeous music he created. The sometimes horrific makeup job buried Cooper so that some scenes looked like attempts to re-enact famous photos of Bernstein (like Laguna Beach's annual "Pageant of the Masters" ) and they were successful at that, albeit briefly, and to what end? The movie told me more about his wife, who comes across as a more realized, more complex character. Carey Mulligan deserves a Best-Actress nomination but Cooper's probably inevitable nod should be for Best Supporting Actor if at all.

To me it fully captured this manic force of nature this giant cultural phenomena of that era - the genius and the narcissistic indifference to the people who loved him, and did so through the perspective of his wife, and her love for him.

It was also a cinematic masterpiece, for example using the physical form of the movie itself to reflect the evolving cultural experience of cinema from the 40s through the 90s. It was to my eyes a visual delight.