Leonard Bernstein once quipped: “The world wants us to be only one thing, and I find that to be deplorable.” This imaginative, charismatic, and high energy conductor was a man of many trades: a pianist, a music teacher, a composer of stage musicals and classical compositions, a lively hedonist, and an inimitable extravert.
Maestro is a biographical film about this genius of many trades (Bradley Cooper) and his wife Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). It is directed by Bradley Cooper from a screenplay he co-wrote with Josh Singer. It was produced by Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Cooper, among others.
Although the film includes many scenes of Bernstein conducting, teaching music, and composing, the focus is more on his relationships than on his music. We do hear many of his works on the soundtrack, including passages from West Side Story and his Mass. There is also a long sequence recreating the seminal moment in 1973 when he conducts Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral.
The story makes it clear that throughout his long career, Bernstein’s creativity was influenced by his relationship with his wife. As a result, this wild, unrestrained, and passionate biodrama sheds light on how complicated and unpredictable a marriage can be. Poetry commentator Roger Housden maps out what this means in his book Ten Poems to Open Your Heart:
“Love is more like an electrical storm than a pension plan. It has scant regard for our rational intentions. When it comes, almost always unbidden, love will upset our comfortable routines. Like so much confetti, it will fling into the air all our fantasies of what our life is meant to look like. “
At the age of 25 and living in New York City, Lenny meets Felicia Montealgre (Carey Mulligan) at a party. She is an actress who was born in Costa Rica and raised in Chile. They are immediately attracted to each other and recognize that with their common passions for music and the arts, they are soulmates. They marry and have a family.
Theirs is not a simple union. Lenny had homosexual relationships, including with a musician in the orchestra (Matt Bomer) and some of his students. He is open about these affairs and Felicia tolerates them, believing that in the bigger picture, she has the greater influence.
The following quotes raise aspects of marriage that are reflected in the film. As you apply them to moments in the drama, you may also want to reflect on how they come up in your own life.
The Spirit of Love
“You will find as you look back on your life that the moments that stand out above everything else are the moments when you have done things in a spirit of love.”
— Henry Drummond quoted in Love as a Way of Life by Gary Chapman
A School of Love
“This world is nothing but a school of love; our relationships with our husband or wife, with our children and parents, with our friends and relatives are the university in which we are meant to learn what love and devotion truly are.”
— Swami Muktananda quoted in The Inner Treasureby Jonathan Star
Different Notions of Love
“We will accept variety in almost anything, from roses and religions to politics and poetry. But when it comes to love, each of us believes we know the real thing, and we are reluctant to accept other notions.”
— John Alan Lee
Expectations
“Our expectations for the ones we love are great – a lot greater than the ones we have for ourselves. Our loved ones carry the burden of how we feel about ourselves, like a monkey on their back. And we, in turn, carry the burden of how they feel about themselves.”
— Merle Shain in Courage My Love
No Perfection
“In marriage there is no escape from the dark corners of another human being. There is no escape from the mirror another casts on my own sorry state. . . . Marriage calls us to abandon our longing for the perfect; for our partner's perfection, and also for our own.”
— Roger Housden in Ten Poems to Open Your Heart
Our Responsibility
“To regard our partner as the source of our happiness or misery is to abdicate responsibility for our own experience.”
— John Welwood in Love and Awakening
Falling Back in Love
“In a grown-up marriage, we recognize that we don't always have to be in love with one another. . . . But a grown-up marriage enables us when we fall out of love with each other to stick around until we fall back in.”
— Judith Viorst quoted in Overcoming Life’s Disappointments by Harold Kushner
A Sacred Adventure
"Marriage was the deepest, most mysterious, most profound exploration open to humankind; . . . The plunging into one another's soul, this pressure of bodies together, so brutally intimate, was the closest one could come to a sacred adventure."
— Joyce Carol Oates in Marriages and Infidelities
* Photos by Jason McDonald/Netflix - © 2023 Netflix, Inc.