MAESTRO. Due as much to my penchant for low-culture goonery as anything else, Bradley Cooper's decision to follow up his directorial debut — A Star Is Born (2018), admittedly also a thematic outlier to me — with a meditation on the life and times of Leonard Bernstein seemed anachronistic, to say the least. Shame on me, of course, for knowing Bernstein only by name and by reference in Todd Field's Tár (2022), but despite his apparent, enduring influence on American music, the man is very much of an era now long passed. A denizen of the New York intelligentsia of the mid-20th century, Bernstein was one of those figures of prominence who, for a brief moment, could exist with the same apparent ease in the academic salon as in the public eye. But, as Cooper illuminates in the screenplay he wrote with Josh Singer, in his lead performance and in his direction, Bernstein was more (and more complicated) than his persona or his legacy.

Furthermore, we now know that Cooper as director is both drawn to classic things and to the looming possibility of very public failure. A Star Is Born had been remade a number of times and could have been called irrelevant when he took his shot, but he tried to reconstruct it as something modern and timeless, while also taking real artistic risks in the process. The hell of it is, it worked. Memed and diminished as the movie might have become, it endures, as much for its emotional rawness as for the grandeur of its moviemaking.

With Maestro, Cooper bounds further out onto the limb, prostheses and decades and all, challenging himself to interpret a life, to re-envision it for the screen without allowing it to slip into caricature and self-parody. It's an exercise that requires maintaining an almost indefinable narrative balance, while also controlling an elaborately scaled and staged production.

Spanning a near half-century, Maestro finds its primary focus in the relationship between Bernstein (Cooper) and Felicia Montealegre Cohn (Carey Mulligan) who, soon enough after their fortuitous introduction, will marry and start a family. Between them stand Lenny's formidable career and perhaps even more formidable appetites, though; life isn't all Champagne and pool parties.

The most delicate aspect is in balancing obvious reverence for the man with the acknowledgement of his weaknesses, his failings and limitations, both in life and in art. As the years progress, Bernstein is increasingly distant from his wife, insistent on maintaining a lifestyle conducive to the creation of art but which, in reality, is more indulgent than productive. Cooper strikes this balance with a self-awareness and sort of daring internality that, with one wrong note, could render the whole project a misguided cartoon. But there isn't an off note in his performance or in any of them: Mulligan, always fascinating, delivers a particular type of mid-Atlantic blueblood ferocity that serves as a perfect check to her husband's shy libertine. And Matt Bomer, a standout among a supporting cast of standouts, portrays some of the subtlest, most mature heartbreak in contemporary cinema.

As tremendous as Maestro's ensemble is, though, the resounding success lies in the artistic execution of a vision. Matthew Libatique's film photography is, pardon the potential hyperbole, without peer in recent memory. Transitioning from full-frame, velvety black and white to lush, summery widescreen compositions as the story progresses, with deceptively complex tracking shots and transitions as punctuation, this is a masterpiece of design and execution that is unafraid to sit quietly when the moment demands it.

This is not the movie I would have asked for, necessarily, but it's all the more satisfying for the surprises it offers. R. 129M. NETFLIX.

ANATOMY OF A FALL is, in a number of ways, an anti-Maestro. A courtroom procedural that challenges notions of justice and explores the ambiguities inherent in romantic relationships and legal proceedings alike, it is spare, quiet and frequently confrontational. In its way, though, it is just as fully formed a work of art and perhaps an even more impressive acting showcase.

Sandra (Sandra Hüller), a successful novelist, has returned with her husband, Samuel (Samuel Theis), to his French hometown with their young son Daniel (Milo Machado Graner). Samuel, we learn, is a frustrated writer himself, which is one of many reasons the marriage is strained, maybe to the breaking point.

When a fatal fall is deemed suspicious, a formal trial ensues, during which we learn enough about the family to wonder where the truth actually lies.

Justine Triet, directing a screenplay she co-wrote with Arthur Harari, demonstrates the control of an old hand, creating an internecine morality play that teases answers that it is too smart to fully reveal. With almost no extra-diegetic music, the storminess and silence of the characters becomes the soundtrack and Hüller gives an indelible, painfully mesmerizing lead performance. R. 151M. AMAZON PRIME.

John J. Bennett (he/him) is a movie nerd who loves a good car chase.

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