Conversations and insights about the moment.
Oscar Bait is The Point’s series of conversations about films nominated for the Academy Award for best picture. Today, Christopher Orr, an editor in Opinion who was once a film critic, discusses “Maestro” with Vanessa Mobley, OpEd Editor.
Christopher Orr, an editor in Opinion
I think it’s fair to say “Maestro” is in the middle class of this year’s Oscar nominees generally: It’s neither an awards-season juggernaut nor a beloved indie. It’s in the running for a number of the major awards, but it’s unlikely to win any of them when the statuettes get handed out in March.
That said, you and I both liked the movie quite a lot.
Vanessa Mobley, OpEd Editor
I watched it for a second time last night. What an intimate film it is — so many scenes are framed around Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan) — so much so that it seems as if the rest of the world sort of melts away.
I don’t know whether or not the movie will be taken seriously by the academy, but I will say that I cannot imagine one of the principals winning without the other one. Somehow, Cooper and Mulligan have translated to those watching this movie the feeling that Leonard and Felicia seem to be having of one another — total fascination.
Christopher Orr
I love that. I’m not usually a fan of artist biopics, which too often neglect the art in favor of scenes of mental illness or addiction or the like — with the implication that that’s where the art comes from. One could make the case that “Maestro” does something similar with Leonard and Felicia’s marriage, I suppose, but it’s all played in such an elegant, ambivalent minor key.
Vanessa Mobley
Please tell me more about why you are not a fan of artist biopics. I’ll admit I am.
Christopher Orr
The creation of art tends to be highly uncinematic, so you’re too often offered the artist’s drunken tantrums or rampant womanizing or something else that’s more dramatic.
But let me shift gears a moment and express my profound annoyance at the academy’s failure to nominate Cooper for best director. “Maestro” is an auteur film! This is the second time in a row, after “A Star Is Born,” that he’s been overlooked as director. It’s bizarre.
Vanessa Mobley
So maybe Cooper isn’t Laurence Olivier or Roberto Benigni (who both took home Oscars for acting in films they directed). But the entirety of “Maestro” is his as much as “Barbie” is Greta Gerwig’s.
Christopher Orr
And Gerwig wasn’t nominated for best director, either. A tremendously frustrating category.
Another note on Cooper as a director: He gets great performances not only from himself and from A-list actors (Mulligan is sublime in “Maestro”) but also from performers you might not expect, like Lady Gaga in “A Star Is Born” and Sarah Silverman in “Maestro.”
Vanessa Mobley
For a movie that moves from black and white to color, from love to vitriol to reconciliation, “Maestro” is a trip. It’s a movie that struck me as deeply felt — contrary to the views of many film critics. (Of whom I am not one! A humble viewer.)
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