MAESTRO-Alas, No Master Class/Bradley Cooper Does Badly

MAESTRO, the biopic, musical movie about Leonard Bernstein's life stars acclaimed actor Bradley Cooper.  Cooper also co-wrote and directs this massive missed opportunity for a film depicting one of the most gifted and beloved musicians, composers, educators and conductors of the 20th C.  A prodigal pianist by age five, born to Russian immigrant parents in New York, Bernstein became a cause celebre' at 25 when he filled in to conduct the NY Philharmonic on short notice and got noticed by fans and musical muckety mucks, alike. Bernstein was hailed as a conductor who made classical music accessible to everyone, especially young people in his young people's concerts. These televised programs are emulated and used as teaching tools today.  One of the greatest musicals of all time to grace Broadway is "West Side Story".  Bernstein famously collaborated with renowned choreographer Jerome Robbins on "West Side Story," and also on the ballet "On the Town," one of NYC Ballet's iconic ballets.  My favorite scene was of Bernstein watching a rehearsal of "On the Town" with starry-eyed adulation. Was this for his music, dancing or for one of the male dancers.  This was not the first nod to Bernstein's homosexuality.  The morning he receives his life-changing call to conduct at Carnegie Hall, he hops onto his lover's back and plays the buttocks like bongos.  The main thrust of Bernstein's illustrious life centers around his intermittent flings with other men and while seeming to be flitting around his wife and family.  Filmed in black/white at the beginning of the film and in chroma color during his marriage to his wife Felicity (a compelling Carey Mulligan) and resuming black/white filming during his years as a widower  years as a living more openly gay was one of Cooper's artistic missteps as a director.  The cinematography was alluring but the artistic choices in mass were artifice devices which failed to suffice for a discordant story.  There were too many missing staccatos and missing beats needed for a resounding bio pick worth singing about. I wanted to hear about Bernstein's struggles as a composer or conductor.  What was his childhood like or his relationship with his parents (other dreaming of killing patricide). Symphonies contain several movements with pauses in between.  Oftentimes, novices mistakenly clap inappropriately and prematurely.  Cooper's directing felt as faux as his conducting Mahler's symphony and then showing Bernstein slobbering over Felicity after his less than faithful marriage which was at the core.  Overall I was left wanting to shout give us something much more than Leonard lusting for men again and again.