Bradley Cooper's Maestro (2023) - "jewface the music, and dance..."

[Key]

I saw from the BBC article on this they'd chosen to quote 2 of the most mendacious bad faith Israel lobbyists and antisemitism witch hunters in the UK.

It was amusing seeing their conceited bilge underneath the Bernstein family saying they love Bradley Cooper and they're certain Leonard would have had no issue whatsoever with the makeup.

We've got ourselves into a very confused position where certain groups must be portrayed by actors belonging to the same community yet it is simultaneously unthinkable and bad form to object to others being played by people of different gender, race, etc.

It was satisfying to see Oberman being described as disingenuous by the Bernstein family.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Actors not looking anything like their real-life counterparts can work fine (see: Coogan as Tony Wilson, Fassbender as Jobs, people who have played Elvis or Marilyn Monroe etc), sometimes maybe even better as it avoid the "uncanny valley" element when someone looks very similar but not quite right.

Also the nose thing isn't comparable to blackface. You can look like Bernstein without being Jewish, you can't look like Martin Luther King if you're not black.

[Old Nehamkin]

I guess it may help draw the audience closer to a depiction of reality.

There are thresholds aren't there? Presumably if John Hurt had played the Elephant Man without makeup you wouldn't have said 'who fucking cares'. If this was an animation they'd have drawn a likeness of Bernstein wouldn't they.

A philosophy of who fucking cares should logically apply the other way around. It's makeup. Do whatever, go for it.

I don't think that "depicting reality" in a biographical film is an aim that's in any way reliant or even necessarily aided by prioritising a literal one-to-one adherence to the physical features of the subject.

Obviously, yes, things like heavy make-up and prosthetics can be applied in any number of interesting and effective ways in performance art, but it's this specific trend of the prestige Hollywood biopic where a big name actor is very conspicuously done up to look as photographically similar to the person they're playing as possible and this being indulgently marketed as some committed actorly feat that's supposed to prove their dedication to reaching the inner truth of the character or whatever.

I saw a twitter thread recently where someone was using AI to "fix" clips from recent biopics like Elvis so that the lead actor's face was morphed to look exactly like the real person. I found it very depressing but the attitude at play feels like sort of an extension of this kind of thing, the invocation of technology to try and squeeze out anything in art that doesn't drive towards pedantic literalism.

[shoulders]

If it doesn't impede the performance, as I have unfortunately seen happen, I'm unmoved by things like this. A costume and makeup is part of a performance and always has been. Similarly if a performance is able to convince with less, that's fine too.

[curiousoranges]

The Freddie Mercury teeth in Bohemian Rhapsody looked ridiculous and were really distracting.

[Keebleman]

The Freddie Mercury teeth in Bohemian Rhapsody looked ridiculous and were really distracting.

True to life then.

[famethrowa]

I'm still greatly amused by Harry Shearer's Nixon show, mainly because he was trumpeting about how exacting his face would be, 4 hours in makeup etc etc, and ended up looking fuck all like the former president, not even as good as those rubber masks what bank robbers use:

[Urinal Cake]

Not commenting until we know what Baddiel thinks.

This is the only responsible reaction.

[Old Nehamkin]

Best Richard Nixon performance is Philip Baker Hall in Secret Honor where he just looks like Philip Baker Hall.

[shoulders]

https://slate.com/culture/2023/08/leonard-bernstein-bradley-cooper-maestro-movie-nose-jewface.html

Worth a read.

[dissolute ocelot]

Anthony Hopkins in Nixon looked nothing like Nixon, and it never did him any harm. Maybe nobody expects historical accuracy from Oliver Stone.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Watched this last night. It's technically very good, the way they get the look of each section to match the look and feel of films of that time period is very impressive. As a result it's mostly 4:3 aspect ratio which I think suits dramas better anyway as you get nice closeups. Some fantastic old-age makeup as well. And Cooper will win the best actor Oscar,  if only for one particular scene at Ely Cathedral circa 1973 which he apparently worked on for 6 years and is absolutely stunning. Mulligan very good too, in a year without Flowers of the Killer Moon she'd probably win.

It's slightly frustrating, kind of skips through his life without getting to the core, so maybe a missed opportunity there. Worth watching overall though, and I didn't even really notice the nose.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

"He could be the first great American conductor!"

[twosclues]

Saw it last week, and while it's not without its flaws, I have to say I was all in by the end. Looked and sounded incredible on the big screen, and I'm not sure how it will translate on Netflix, I expect it will be even more divisive than it's proven already.

[Noodle Lizard]

Bernstein was well-known for his ability to smell music, so the nose is essential.

Anyway, this looks like more dull Oscar fare with an unremarkable actor in it. There's a PBS documentary on Bernstein that I remember being quite good, not sure I need to see Bradley Cooper playing pretend through a necessarily fictionalised version of events with a silly nose.

[PlanktonSideburns]

In his new film

OSCAR PLEEEEEASE

Its an homage to the old magic of Hollywood

Fuck on, cunts

[Johnny Textface]

I think this is quite interesting. I've not watched it for a while but I seem to remember the ladies fairing very well under his conductorship. José Carreras not being able to do "Maria" fairs particularly badly.

[Oh, Nobody]

https://slate.com/culture/2023/08/leonard-bernstein-bradley-cooper-maestro-movie-nose-jewface.html

Worth a read.

But Jewish people are not one race (and "Jewish" itself is not a racial category)

hm.

[shoulders]

To start with, Jewishness is neither a characteristic nor a word that can support any assumption about experience or internal feeling. I'm Jewish, and was raised culturally Jewish, but because I had a Jewish father and a Catholic mother and am therefore not a matrilineal Jew, I grew up hearing from various schmucks and nudniks that I was "not really Jewish," "not technically Jewish," and "not Jewish enough." I bring this up only to note one area in which the comparison to blackface is useful, which is that, just like any ethnic minority, Jews are an astonishingly heterogeneous people, physically, intellectually, politically, culturally, religiously, and experientially. Our upbringings and backgrounds vary vastly, the intensity of our faith runs along an immense spectrum, and what we believe and what we have lived is absolutely uncategorizable by any single generality. There's a reason for the old joke that if you want to start a fight, all you have to do is "put two Jews in a room." No two of us are alike

[Good Hank]

Turned this off halfway through. Dull AF.

[Dex Sawash]

Really wish there was a slade merry xmas everybody but its all are you hanging up your stockings style version of REM End of the world but it is all LEONARD BERNSTEIN

[dissolute ocelot]

Composer biopics were the laziest form of classic Hollywood musicals, hope there are lots of scenes of Lenny japing around at a piano, maybe hearing the joyous chatter of immigrant children and seamlessly translating it into West Side Story. Also there has to be a scene where he plays a random piano in a hotel or railway station leading to him becoming a megastar. Fuck, i could write this. Maybe a scene where he kills a kid with his baton and has a crisis of confidence.

[Maureen Brontë]

I mean, could they not have just made the film without the prosthetic nose? Is the nose that important?

[gilbertharding]

I'm not going to see this, at all, ever, but I have noticed that the criticism now other people have seen it has shifted from the conk to how bad Cooper is at pretending to be a conductor...

I have no idea. I know from people I know who work in orchestras that some conductors are shit at conducting. I wonder if Bernstein (how is that pronounced, by the way - Bernschteen?) was considered to be good at conducting...

(There's a joke - the conductor of an orchestra falls ill one night. The people in charge discover that the one of the second viola players is a competent conductor, so they ask him to stand in. The next evening, the conductor is fit, and back... and the second viola player's back in his chair, where his mate turns to him and says "Where were you last night?")

[rjd2]

Turned this off halfway through. Dull AF.

Should have done the same, so so boring.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I wonder if Bernstein (how is that pronounced, by the way - Bernschteen?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnW0oi7iPQ4&t=146s