I felt ASMR shivers all over my body, watching Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein conduct Mahler’s Second Symphony in “Maestro.” The symphony rang with such passion. Everyone at that moment in that scene, not just Cooper’s Bernstein at the podium, but every single one of them…, or us, seemed to resonate in a singular harmony of jubilation.
But it was not historically accurate, or authentic, I knew right away.
The first give away was that there were women in Cooper’s orchestra. In fact, in the performance at Ely Cathedral that the movie was supposedly recreating, there was not a single woman in the London Symphony Orchestra, and that was not atypical in 1973. In addition, the string players would not have felt so free, or entitled, to embody whatever they felt that the music was expressing. In contrast to the scene from “Maestro,” the actual video footage from that performance shows the string players remaining stoic in their seats despite the strenuous hand-positions and fast tremolos. In the tradition of Western classical music, musical performance is to be about the music, first and foremost, then the composer, then maybe the conductor. The players are to remain faceless and nameless, to serve as mere conduits to channel the beauty and the sublime that is beyond all of us mortals.
In fact, Bernstein himself was frequently criticized for his flamboyance as a conductor during his lifetime, especially earlier in his career. His success was not because of, but despite, his dramatic gestures and physical exuberance. The fact that he was also a composer (his first symphony “Jeramiah” won the New York Music Critics’ Circle Award for the best American work in 1944), and an eloquent and handsome American with a degree from Harvard must have helped. Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) was a perfect archetype of the post-WWII larger-than-life creative genius, our 20th century Ubermensch. His rise to stardom reflected the age of American democracy and Universal Declaration of Human Rights highlighting the notion of individual rights and freedom, including that of expression.
If we were to think of “Maestro” as a cost-benefit analysis of the pedestals we so eagerly kept occupied with generations of cultural icons, Felicia Montealegre-Cohen’s (1922-1978) relationship to the “Maestro” becomes symbolic of the price to those in the supporting roles.
In the movie, on the night of their first encounter, Lenny suggests that the reasons why Felicia has not yet claimed the center-stage as an aspiring actress, like he has as a conductor, might be due to her fear. Felicia replies with the following.
There are many things stopping me, Lenny, but fear isnât one of them. I wouldnât be standing here in front of you, heavens I wouldnât even be in New York City if fear had gotten the better of me. Itâs just not that easy… and of course, you are a man.
From the script “Maestro” P. 19 https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Maestro-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf
The last sentence felt – again – unauthentic, like an attempt at political correctness at the expense of faithful recreation of what they would have actually said in 1947, however true we know the statement to have been in our retrospective gaze from the post-#MeToo 2023.
The scene of the couple arguing with Macy’s Thanksgiving parade in the background, sometime in the 1970’s, however, rang true with my own experience, and stung me.
Your truth is a fucking lie that sucks up all the energy in every room and gives the rest of us zero opportunity to live or even breathe as our true selves. Your truth makes you brave and strong and saps the rest of us of any kind of bravery or strength. Because itâs so draining, Lenny, itâs so fucking draining to love and accept someone who doesnât love and accept themselves. And thatâs the only truth I know about you.
From the script “Maestro” P. 75: https://deadline.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Maestro-Read-The-Screenplay.pdf
Everyone has defining moments in their lives. One of mine happened when I was 35. My mother told me that no one in the world will ever want to marry me. Because, she said, I exhaust everyone around me. I have too much energy, I am to be admired only from afar, because no one will ever be able to stand being my family, or being with me at all. Felicia’s words at Lenny felt the same as my mom’s words at me.
As a semi-successful pianist, I have been up on that pedestal, nowhere near the height of Bernstein’s, but enough to know. Regularly presented in evening gowns under spotlights as the featured soloist for the ritual of two-hour concerts, I suffered from the pressure to be, or at least appear to be, larger-than-life. The volatile lifestyle of a traveling performer, downing cocktails of alcohol and caffein to keep up your entertainment value on no sleep, can drive anyone to eccentric behaviors. Your defiance to conformity with erratic life choices is not just your portrayal of how you think “artists” ought to be, but also a desperate attempt to exercise a semblance of some control over your own life, or at least, your next free hour. But that leaves those on the ground with normal adult responsibilities crazy. “I am not your maid!” My mom used to scream before and after my concerts. My friends called me “princess Makiko,” not entirely in jest.
But I have also been around that pedestal as a supporter, admirer, accomplice, and aspirant as these icons’ student, protege, lover and player, to know what Felicia, and my mom, meant. The sense that what they are forces you to become something you have never agreed to be is relatable to me, too. In my own case, adding to the dynamic was the icons’ white, or white-presenting, male privilege in contrast to my intersectionality as a Japanese female ESL immigrant, navigating the music scenes of 1990’s NYC. The stereotype of docile and smiling long-haired Japanese “girl” made it challenging to assert myself and claim that center-stage, maybe in a similar way Felicia was describing her experience to be, compared to his.
The burden of that pedestal, both to the icons themselves, and to those around them have been trendy on the silver screen lately: Jackie (2016, with Natalie Portman playing Jacqueline Kennedy), Bohemian Rhapsody (2018), I am Woman (2019, about singer-song writer, Helen Reed), The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021), TĂĄr (2022 – a fictional “biopic”), Oppenheimer (2023)…but the price of the iconic status has been best captured, in my humble opinion, by a biopic from decades ago, “Hilary and Jackie” (1998) about the legendary cellist Jacqueline Du PrĂ© (1945-1987) from her sister Hilary’s point of view.
There is a scene in “Hilary and Jackie” that I cannot forget even though it has easily been two decades since I watched the film. Jackie’s career suddenly takes off, and she starts to tour all over the world, while Hilary and the rest of the family resume their lives in London. One day, they receive a delivery of a large package from Jackie. Everyone is all excited, until they open the package to discover it only containing Jackie’s dirty laundry.
Notably, this is one of the only scenes in the movie that gets Jackie’s perspective. Jackie is still a teen, on her very first tour, suffering from nerves and insomnia. She is frightened, fatigued and homesick. She does not know how to manage her day to day, including the accumulating laundry, and one day wraps it all in a large brown paper and mails it home. It’s an SOS. When she receives the clean laundry back from home, she breathes it in, throws the whole content on the bed of her hotel room for the night, swimming in it, smiling for the first time after her meteoric rise to stardom.
We are all humans. In the age of #MeToo, #BLM and DEI, we are reevaluating our social hierarchy, including the notion of creative genius. Waiting for a savior, or a superman will just be futile, we should know by now. The trend we see in these films is just a reflection of our collective attempts.
