Development

In 2008, producers Fred Berner and Amy Durning [de] approached the Bernstein family to negotiate Leonard Bernstein's life and music rights. Once retaining rights, Berner and Durning approached Josh Singer to develop and write a screenplay and attached Martin Scorsese as a director. The project went into development at Paramount Pictures.^[9]

In 2017, Scorsese stepped down as director to work on The Irishman. Briefly, Steven Spielberg considered directing the film and approached Bradley Cooper to star. When Spielberg decided not to direct the film, Cooper said he wanted to "throw his hat in the ring" as a possible director. In May 2018 Cooper was firmly attached as both director and to star as Bernstein, after Spielberg saw a pre-release screening of A Star Is Born.^[10] Berner, Durning, and Scorsese continued on as producers alongside Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger of Amblin Entertainment. In January 2020, the project was moved to Netflix.^[11]

Casting

In September 2020, the project was given the title Maestro with Carey Mulligan joining the cast. It was also announced that filming would begin in the spring of 2021.^[12] In October, Jeremy Strong joined the cast as John Gruen, but later dropped out due to scheduling conflicts; Josh Hamilton was cast in his place.^[13][14] In March 2022, Matt Bomer joined the cast.^[15] Bomer would be confirmed in April, with Maya Hawke also announced as being cast.^[16] In June, Sarah Silverman was announced as playing Bernstein's sister Shirley.^[17] In February 2023, Michael Urie was announced to be appearing in the film as Jerome Robbins.^[18] In April 2023, it was reported that Miriam Shor was a part of the cast.^[19][20][21]

Filming

Filming was initially expected to begin on April 5, 2021, in Los Angeles;^[22] but instead began in May 2022.^[16][23] Production occurred at Tanglewood between May 21 and 26,^[24] Fairfield, Connecticut at Bernstein’s home, and in New York City. Filming also took place at Ely Cathedral in England between October 20 and 22.^[25]

Box office

Although Netflix does not publicly report box office grosses, IndieWire estimated the film made about $200,000 from eight theaters in its opening weekend (and a total of $300,000 over the five-day Thanksgiving frame), which would make it the most successful debut for the company since at least 2019.^[34]

Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 79% of 324 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The website's consensus reads: "Led by a pair of powerful performances, Maestro serves as a stirring overview of a tremendous talent's life and legacy."^[35] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 62 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.^[36]

The performances and Cooper's direction received praise, with BBC Culture's Nicholas Barber complimenting Cooper's "technical virtuosity" and ability to "fulfill his ambitions with flair,"^[37] and David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter lauding the film's depiction of marriage and describing Mulligan's role as "heartbreaking".^[38] Adam Graham of Detroit News wrote, "Maestro comes alive as Cooper filters Bernstein's passion for life and all its grand indulgences into an intensely physical performance, which peaks in a sweat-drenched conducting sequence that bursts off the screen."^[39]

Conversely, Richard Brody of The New Yorker criticized the film for disregarding parts of Bernstein's life, writing that "The movie's general lack of candor matches its scrupulous avoidance of controversy and complexity, which does no justice to the complex and controversial characters at the center of the film."^[40]

In a review for El País, Carlos Boyero wrote: "Cooper whimsically uses color and black and white to portray his life, and exotic planning to recount Bernstein’s present and past. And in the way he describes him, I fail to figure out where his appeal and genius lies. I’m getting confused. I just don’t like him, I don’t care about him, I’m not bothered about his achievements and his failures."^[41] while la La Repubblica called the film "a non-conventional biopic, part musical, part melodrama".^[42]

Use of prosthetic

Cooper's use of a large prosthetic nose to portray Bernstein, who was Jewish, was criticized by some as an example of "Jewface", following the release of photographs from the set of the film in May 2023 and the subsequent release of the trailer in August.^[43] The chief television critic of The Hollywood Reporter, Daniel Fienberg, criticized the casting of Cooper in a Twitter post, along with the British gentile Mulligan as a Costa Rican-Chilean converted Jew, as "a LOT of ethnic cosplay for one movie".^[44] English Jewish actress Tracy-Ann Oberman wrote that if Cooper "can't [play the role] through the power of acting alone then don't cast him – get a Jewish actor". She felt that as Cooper had portrayed Joseph Merrick, a 19th-century British man who had severe facial deformities, without prosthetics, "then he should be able to manage to play a Jewish man without one".^[43]

Bernstein's children defended Cooper's use of prosthetic makeup to portray him, stating that they worked with Cooper throughout the filmmaking process and that their "dad would have been fine with it".^[45] The Anti-Defamation League noted historical media portrayal of Jews as "evil caricatures with large, hooked noses" but said that "this film, which is a biopic, ... is not that".^[46] In September 2023, Kazu Hiro, who created the prosthetic, said that he was surprised by the criticism but was "sorry if [he] hurt some people's feelings". He added that "our only intention" was to portray Bernstein "as authentically as possible".^[47]

The New Yorker published an essay defending the special effects make-up used by Hiro in the film and numbered him as among the top three or four special effects make-up artists of the past fifty years stating the film's background intentions as: "In the beginning, Hiro worked on a prosthetic treatment that was, in Cooper's words, 'totally Lenny'. But Cooper felt that it didn't look real. 'We wanted to find a medium between Lenny and me', he explained, 'so we created this hybrid.' The most difficult years for Hiro to re-create were Bernstein's final ones. Even late in life, Bernstein was flirtatious. Cooper felt that the seventy-something Bernstein still needed to look a bit 'sexy'."^[48]

Accolades

With this film, co-producer Steven Spielberg extended his record for the most Best Picture nominations for an individual to 13.^[49] Bradley Cooper, who became the fifteenth person to direct himself to a Best Actor nomination for A Star Is Born (2018), has now become the fifth person to have done so more than once.^[50]