You should see TAR and Cate Blanchett's performance rather than this

​@@rics1883 naw

I'm seeing Maetro this coming weekend. I loved Bernstein's vivacity and intellect, so hope I won't be disappointed by this account focusing more on his personal life. I believe his children all give the film their approval, which must be a good sign!

​@@williamevans9426 Yeah I'll be interested to hear what you think. I'm in the music industry so I've hung out with a lot of Bernstein friends and so on, and although I never met him I have a pretty good feeling of what he was like through those guys. The one anecdote that stands out (who knows if it's true but it's been confirmed over and over to me) -- late in life, well after his wife's death, some cheesy European promoter was trying to get him to conduct one of those 'gala' events somewhere in Austria. He said no, over and over, but the guy was persistent, so finally he agreed but he gave a list of conditions. They included hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scotch and cigars, but that's pretty normal for celebrity riders -- the funniest one was a brand-new, custom-made, premium Harley Davidson glider, tricked out with a whole list of specs, and not only that, but the producers had to build a ramp that didn't just go from his hotel suite to the concert venue, it had to go from his ROOM to the conductor's podium on the stage, so that with zero rehearsal he could just get as f*** up in his bathtub as he wanted, jump into his tux, onto this hog, and drive it to the clamshell and jump off and give the downbeat! Cooper didn't put that in there, obviously, but there are wonderful traces of suggestions of it, like the scene where he's doing lines of blow off this dude's head, or a fantastic bit after the Tanglewood Beethoven rehearsal I mention where all the sudden he's banging the student he had just corrected in a Scorsese-red dance floor with Tears for Fears blasting -- it truly looks demonic and he's covered in sweat and his hair is all over the place: THIS is the "Lenny" that I had heard about all those years. So clearly there is something going on right now in American culture, where the Americans are battling the age-old contradictory impulses of what the Greeks called the 'dionysian' (quote unquote 'bad behavior,' in other words) versus its wasp heritage of reactionary protestant puritanism. Obviously, Carey Mulligan represents this latter ideal, and when she says, during her final scenes, 'what we must be is sensitive to each other... it is kindness, kindness, that is all' -- here it seems like the writers (I don't know what Cooper was responsible for and what Singer wrote, and surely there were lots of drafts of this thing) are very self-conscious of the themes. However, (and I don't mean this as a criticism) it's very uneven and mostly it seems as if Cooper is fundamentally confused. His Bernstein has zero chemistry with Felicia. He tries to show it, but to me at least as a woman it's totally unconvincing. Was this the point? I don't really know. All the women in this film are extremely unattractive. They are depressed, anxious, and shrew-like, and they have no interests of their own, no artistic ambitions of their own -- and meanwhile the men, on the other hand, are beautiful and vital. So the women become rigid and austere, and the men run around guiltily between creative triumphs. So in a way it's a fascinating companion piece to "Tar" and clearly it shows a society that is trying to figure out these things and is very troubled by them, and I don't think we should give more credit to "Tar" just because Field is a depressive. (My 'intellectual' friends are doing this right now.) And Cooper went to so much trouble to actually learn about music, while Field apparently didn't feel that need, so you get the ridiculous conducting scenes in Tar, where she isn't even giving downbeats. (My own personal take -- for what it's worth -- I'll bet Cooper doesn't really understand women and so he feels a little guilty about their unhappiness -- that is, when he encounters it? Meanwhile he is swept up in his love for Bernstein, who represents some kind of mystical/artistic and essentially European ideal. In real life, Felicia did at times privately voice her disapproval of her husband's sexuality -- but it was in the context of a homophobic society, in which Bernstein himself was tormented by his own 'sinful' nature; the reason Felicia was frustrated was because Bernstein kept telling her that he _would_ change: this is not referenced anywhere in the film. But basically she was more than happy to marry a wealthy international superstar, and they both had separate and active and fulfilling love lives: this, again, is not referenced anywhere in the script. Many of the vignettes in the film are drawn from Humphrey Burton's biography which is very much of its time, i.e. one of his sources credits Bernstein with convincing him that gay love was not only immoral but lethal; Bernstein "saved my life," he's quoted as saying -- which gives some insight into the complexity of Bernstein's psyche!)

Looks like Ely to me

yes it's Ely

They did yes, I worked as a location marshal the week they shot there- beautiful location!

@@gabrielbrown4764 when my wife and I visited England back in the 90s, we made a special trip there so that I could see the space for myself. I've long been a fan of that Bernstein London symphony performance.

😂😂

No man could ever. lol

Lenny was Lydia's "in-universe" mentor so that makes sense - both actors have good reasons to be using the same real life conducting style as a model.

No one can best Lydia lol

Lydia Tar is my favorite fictional Charecter

You mean Linda? 😒

What do you mean?

Seguin was coaching Cooper

@@EamonKelly I mean that the only shots of him conducting everyone were taken from the film. All we saw was the actual conductor conducting the entire orchestra. After watching this video I did some reading I looked up and confirmed it wasn’t CGI or anything but they should’ve shown some behind the scenes type footage when he was in front of the whole orchestra, it’s an odd arrangement of clips here from like a “Oscar campaign”/trying to be impressive standpoint

I felt like my heart was about to burst during this scene. It was an incredible experience and made me wish I had been in Ely Cathedral, watching Bernstein. This will have to do.

HORRENDOUS JOB!!!!!!!

He has about as much money

Let's hope not!!!

Not if "Oppenheimer" is weaponized over awards season to call Hollywood hypocritical for a movie being made that condemns those who have their livelihoods destroyed while people in the industry are being blacklisted for speaking out against genocide. Plus Murphy is overrated as hell in that performance.

How about we appreciate art instead of judging it?

no1 mentioned Cillian, this video is about bradley if you can see

In a way, they are.

Well said. A "show for the show's sake" is exactly what I suspect most onlookers of conducting assume of the art form, as if its interpretive qualities are meant to entertain rather than communicate important information about the score. Cooper conveys exuberance, sure, but Bernstein's exuberance was always in service of the music. This scene completely took me out of the film.

Hes a friggin actor- would you expect him to actually conduct? Not even on Gilbert kaplans level

You're absolutely right. Unfortunately Hollywood chooses to promote certain figures in order to promote certain agendas. But the truth eventually comes out.

I think it's a little OTT to describe these incidents as 'sinister'!

Changing the beautiful sound Beethoven created into a rough trumpet heavy mess by using 3 times as many strings as Beethoven did, and then adding more trumpets is vandalism. Blaming the bad sound on Beethoven by saying he doesn't know how to orchestrate is something only a con artist would do. How could that not be sinister? @@williamevans9426

And?

I think it’s delicious. CAREFUL with your latent homophobia. Let’s not be bigots.

Maybe because Bernstein loved Mahler's music? I wanted more of Bernstein conducting Beethoven.