"I love people so much that it's hard for me to be alone."

Twenty years ago, De-Lovely chronicled the life of composer Cole Porter, played by Kevin Kline, a gay man forced into the closet by societal norms at the time, who nevertheless managed to carve out a strong and loving partnership with a strong-willed woman, Ashley Judd's Linda Porter. It was an effortlessly charming film that might now be viewed as a sort of soufflé film, one which was deceptively hard to make look so effortless, but it remains a high water mark for the composer biopic genre.

It's therefore disappointing to see Bradley Cooper once again come to the world of directing and pour his everything into making a film that is basically pleading with the audience to love it because of the effort put into its creation. Maestro is not unlike a meal where the chef talks your ear off while you're eating it about all of the time, money, and effort he put into crafting this meal. It doesn't make the meal any less tasty, it just doesn't live up to the insane preparation that clearly went into its creation.

Following a brief opening that shows composer Leonard Bernstein (Cooper) near the end of his life, we flash back to him catching his big break as a conductor not long before crossing paths with Felicia Montealegre (a brilliant Carey Mulligan), a friend of his sister Shirley (Sarah Silverman). The film then proceeds in chronological order through their relationship and its many ups and downs, but it's clear that Cooper and co-writer Josh Singer view Felicia as the heart of the film and therefore never stray too far from her point of view.

Thankfully, Cooper manages to eschew the typical biopic trappings by making a collage of Bernstein's life rather than a strict adherence to covering only the major events in his life. It's more than a little mind-blowing that, in the post-Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story era, films like Bohemian Rhapsody still maintain slavish faithfulness to the biopic formula, right down to Freddie Mercury thinking about his entire life before he goes on stage. Cooper is too savvy a filmmaker to fall victim to those trappings, but he also doesn't do quite enough to break completely free of the biopic formula, making the film a frustrating watch at times.

The film features a murderer's row of great character actors in supporting roles, but almost none of them manage to register because the film is so focused on Lenny and Felicia. Therefore, anyone hoping to see more of Michael Urie as Jerome Robbins or Matt Bomer as one of Bernstein's early lovers will be disappointed when they don't return after the first twenty minutes. Even Miriam Shor, who is having one hell of a 2023, fails to make much of an impact in her two scenes, through no fault of her own. The film just doesn't have much interest in the people outside of the Bernsteins' immediate orbit.

Cooper and cinematographer Matthew Libatique do some remarkable work at aping the style of film that best corresponds to the three major eras covered in Bernstein's life, from gorgeous black and white footage of the 40s and 50s to the glorious Technicolor of the late 50s and 60s, and finally the modern anamorphic widescreen of Bernstein's final days. It's a nice treat for film lovers, though a conceit that will likely be lost on the vast majority of folks firing the film up on Netflix. However, it's this dedication to things the average filmgoer won't notice that helps to set the film apart from most biopics.

The film has two moments of utter ecstasy that the rest of the film fails to capitalize on, one being a riff on Bernstein's Broadway musical On the Town and the other being an astonishing recreation of Bernstein conducting Mahler's 2nd Symphony at the Ely Cathedral. In these two scenes, the film achieves such majesty that you wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world while watching them. It's a shame the rest of the film just doesn't sing in quite the same way.

Maestro is a complicated film about a complicated man and his complicated relationships with the people he loved and who loved him. Therefore, it makes sense that I would have such complicated feelings about the film. Cooper's puppy dog earnestness makes it impossible to hate Maestro and with two rock solid central performances, it's too achingly sincere to write off as a misguided vanity project. If only the entire film rose to the level of its two best scenes and two incredible lead performances.