I did not get swept up in the frenzy of A Star is Born when it first came out in 2018. In fact, I deeply did not get it. The film, based on trailers and references to Jackson Maine that I picked up on the internet, reminded me a great deal of the widely-panned 2010 Gwyneth Paltrow film Country Strong. I recall liking Country Strong, but I was 14 when I saw it, which is to say, objectively a moron. (tbc, I don’t think all 14 year olds are by-definition morons, but I know that I was). In any case, I finally watched A Star is Born on an airplane four years after it came out. And I was: baffled. The film did nothing for me. I found it boring, but I finished it because I was on an airplane. My favorite part of the movie is the astonishing, bizarre, and and uncomfortably funny scene during which Lady Gaga as the mononymous Ally accepts a Grammy onstage, and Bradley Cooper pisses himself. It would be really sad if it wasn’t so crazy.
So with all that established, I did not have high hopes for Maestro. On Carey Mulligan’s November Vogue cover, the magazine refers to it as, “The movie everyone’s waiting for,” and I thought: who is everyone? There was also the whole some of it is in black-and-white and some of it is in color thing. And this is not exactly Maestro’s fault, but I am, in general, deeply sick of this trend. Why did we need not one, two, or three but in fact four (FOUR) films this year (Asteroid City, Oppenheimer, Maestro, The Iron Claw) to deploy the black-and-white AND in color trend? Then there was the five-day dream workshop that Cooper asked Mulligan to embark upon with him. In her Vogue cover profile, she said that he asked her if she was ready to “bare [their] souls to each other.” And to top it all off, Bradley Cooper’s casual mention during his Actors on Actors conversation with Emma Stone that he was saying prayers to Leonard Bernstein during filming.
I thought: this man has become a parody of himself.
But the thing is, Maestro works. I found myself totally swept up in its world. I was admiring the shots. I was admiring the clothes. And strangely enough, I was admiring the shift from black-and-white to color midway through the movie.
I’d had my doubts, but I found that by the middle of the film, when the filter shifts, it had become sort of essential. As a film about two artists in one marriage, Maestro plays with all the trappings of what it looks like to be a great artist in a period of history that feels distant enough to be glamorous. Carey Mulligan speaks in a kind of posh, Mid-Atlantic actress accent throughout the film. It doesn’t sound like a voice that anyone would actually speak in. But there’s something about Felicia that feels unknowable and chic, and a voice that doesn't sound like anybody’s voice makes sense for this kind of character. We’re aware throughout the film that she’s built herself in a particular way, and so has Lenny.
Yet, strangely, the sense of performance and self-creation made the whole thing feel more personal to me. It’s rare to see a film that’s actually about a marriage. They tend to be about the lead up or the breakdown, rather than all the cramped, wonderful, tense, and comfortable moments of living in a marriage for a long time. There’s a performative aspect to marriage. I mean, after all, marriages usually begin with a highly choreographed dress-up party where you perform your love for each other in front of a live audience. And while, absolutely, the best marriages allow you to take off whatever version of yourself you wear for the outside world, the sense that you are making a choice to perform a kind of role never entirely goes away. There’s a choreography to living so closely with another person. And I think Maestro understands this. As much as it’s remarkable for two creatively inclined performers to find themselves married to each other, as much as two such people form a very particular kind of life together, there’s also something incredibly mundane about all the most loving moments of the film.
As Leonard and Felicia, Bradley Cooper and Carey Mulligan talk to each other like two people who have loved one another through years of their lives. They laugh at each other in the way that people in love laugh at each other. And they fight like it too. It’s not a tortured portrait of a fraught marriage (as so many films about artists and their wives usually are…because let’s face it, this kind of film usually is about artists and their wives, rarely the other way around). Mulligan is so vivacious, so particular, specific and strong as Felicia. Regardless of the success that Felicia Monteleagre did or didn’t achieve in her life, Cooper’s interpretation of her and Mulligan’s performance as her implies that she had a strong sense of perspective and a great deal of talent. In this sense, the film is typical in its portrayal of a one-artist-but-two-talents marriage. You can feel the tension straining as Felicia happily/drily recites Leonard’s schedule in an early interview the couple gives (in black and white). But importantly, we also see Felicia return to work later in the film, during a separation from Leonard.
The film does risk a certain hetero-demption arc. We see an elderly, over-tanned Leonard Bernstein snorting coke and seeming a bit restless with his young lover while separated from Felicia. We see him inappropriately rope his daughter into acting as a reluctant relationship therapist. The film never tells us explicitly what exactly his and Felicia’s agreement was and why they separated. The affairs? His narcissistic tendencies? Cooper leaves it ambiguous. But I think this works. It’s not a condemnation or rescue of bad gays à la Bohemian Rhapsody. His queerness, his tendency to hold court and emanate charm, his need for attention and encouragement, all these traits are a part of him. And so is his love for Felicia.
And I suppose whatever Cooper and Mulligan discussed at that dream workshop really worked. Because the film is warm, inspiring, and heartbreaking to watch. Nicole Kidman said it best.