→ February 29, 2024
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Maestro.

Leonard Bernstein lived a long and interesting life, earning his place in the pantheon of American music. It’s hard to believe Maestro couldmake him and his life so utterly boring. (It’s streaming exclusively on Netflix.)

Directed and co-written by Bradley Cooper, Maestro is a formulaic biopic that often seems afraid to truly engage with its subject (played by Cooper) or his wife, Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan). The film begins with Bernstein at age 25, thrust into the lead conductor role one night at the New York Philharmonic when the guest conductor is unable to go on, a jumbled mess of a scene that foreshadows the movie’s chronic problems with pacing and tempo. Bernstein is in a relationship with the clarinet player David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer), but soon afterwards meets Felicia at a cocktail party, pursuing and marrying her, although he was gay and had a series of affairs with men throughout their marriage. His career progresses in the background, with nods here and there to his series of successful endeavors (and no mention of his big flop, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which became his last Broadway musical), while his marriage teeters and he and Felicia separate, briefly, before reuniting because he conducted a great performance in 1973. And then she gets cancer and dies.

Maestro isn’t even bad, or so-bad-it’s-good, but dull. Bernstein was fascinating as a person and a composer, yet the film does neither side of him justice. He wrote the music and score for West Side Story, scored On the Waterfront, and wrote three symphonies and numerous other orchestral and chamber pieces, which you’d barely glean from this film. There’s relatively little of his music, certainly not his most famous pieces, in the movie, yet the script focuses for an eternity on that one 1973 performance, where he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra at Ely Cathedral – a show that, in the film, led Felicia to forgive his infidelities, which seems to be a bit of Hollywood nonsense. If you knew nothing of Bernstein before watching Maestro, you would likely leave the film believing he was a conductor and not a composer, or at best a minor composer of lesser-known works.

His relationship with Felicia is supposed to be the heart of the film, but it’s in cardiac arrest; it’s a series of interactions, but few if any are illuminating, and there is zero chemistry of any sort between the two of them, which matters given how much the film wants us to believe that, despite his homosexuality, he both cared for and needed Felicia. It’s as if the two characters barely inhabit the same universe, exacerbated by both actors’ attempts to mimic the accents and intonations of the people they’re portraying, which makes Mulligan sound like she’s in a Julian Fellowes period piece. The drive for verisimilitude in biopics has some clear drawbacks, from the distractions of Cooper’s makeup and voice mimicry to the sense that these two characters aren’t even from the same era.

Nothing sinks Maestro as much as how boring the story is, though. There are certainly several ways to treat a protagonist who’s a philanderer, and struggling with his sexual identity in a time of entrenched discrimination and bigotry, yet is also an icon in his field and was recognized as a genius in his own time. Maestro seems unwilling to engage with the darker side of Bernstein’s character – that, even if Felicia accepted him as who he was and what he was doing, he seemed to be using her as cover and as an emotional support. There’s a bigger question of whether a relationship like this can even work, or be equitable, but the script never comes close to exploring it. I’m mystified by the wide acclaim for the film, but there’s always one major Oscar-nominated film that I just don’t get.

Speaking of which, Maestro was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Original Screenplay; needless to say, I don’t think it should win any of them, with multiple better choices in each category. Greta Lee (Past Lives) should have had Mulligan’s nod, and Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon) or Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers) would have been a better choice than Cooper. The one race to watch here would be Best Makeup and Hairstyling, given the controversy over Cooper’s use of a prosthetic nose to better resemble Bernstein, a choice that the composer’s children have publicly supported. I don’t believe there’s a clear favorite in that category, since Barbie was snubbed, while Variety and Indiewire have both tabbed Maestro as the likely winner. I haven’t seen three of the five nominees yet, so I’ll defer any opinion on this.

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→ January 15, 2024
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May December.

If you’re at least in your mid-30s, you probably remember the tabloid saga of Mary Kay LeTourneau, a sixth-grade teacher who committed statutory rape by sleeping with one of her students, 12-year-old Vili Fualaau. She served about six years in prison, but had two children by Fualaau and they eventually married, staying together for fourteen years until they separated, shortly after which she died of cancer. It was played for laughs, but it was a very real tragedy, with Fualaau a victim of her grooming and abuse, while she herself had a history of private tragedies from alleged abuse in her first marriage to having her three-year-old brother drown in a pool while she was playing in it at the other end.

The new film May December, streaming exclusively on Netflix,takes this story and very, very thinly veils it with some new names and modest details, envisioning the couple as still married twenty-plus years later with one kid in college and two more about to graduate from high school. Within this movie, there’s a film in production about their story at the time of the actual abuse, and an actress, Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), arrives at the family’s house to spend time with them as she prepares for her role as the younger Gracie (Julianne Moore). Elizabeth at least thinks of herself as an extremely serious actress and embeds herself in the family’s daily routines, following Gracie to things like a flower arranging class and helping her with her home baking business, but also clearly flirting with Gracie’s husband, Joe (Charles Melton), who is now just about the same age as Elizabeth. She also meets Gracie’s ex-husband and one of her children from that marriage as well as some neighbors who offer their own interpretations of events that may be unreliable but at least tend to upset the standard narrative about the couple, both the original crimes and their marriage today.

The tone and atmosphere of May December seem like those of a serious drama, but the script is far more that of a dark comedy. Elizabeth and Gracie are utterly ridiculous people, ridiculous in different ways but similar enough that they clash many times throughout their partnership here. Elizabeth’s preparation for the role borders on parody, such as when she visits the pet store where Gracie and Joe worked when she groomed him – and asks to see the stockroom where they first had sex (or, where Gracie first raped Joe). She seems reasonable at first, just affected, but as the film goes on she comes across as either unhinged or perhaps just not that smart, as if she’s going through the steps she believes a good actor takes but doesn’t understand how to translate the checklist into practice.

Gracie, meanwhile, appears to be arrested development in senior citizen form, crying and throwing tantrums like a small child, with a slight lisp or impediment that comes and goes depending on what impression she’s trying to make. She has, or at least has had, the power in her relationship, but as they get older and the kids that bound them together are about to leave them with an empty nest, she might see the odds of Joe leaving her as higher than ever – and perhaps she sees this new film as a way to prevent Joe from leaving their history behind him.

It all leaves Joe, oddly enough, as the film’s most nuanced and interesting character, giving Melton, previously best known for the C.W. drama Riverdale, a great chance to prove himself as a serious actor. Joe insists that he wasn’t a victim, and that the way the world sees him isn’t at all how he sees himself. He’s not happy in the marriage, or at least not happy enough, but it’s less overt than it might be – he hasn’t woken up one day to realize he was groomed, or suddenly decided he doesn’t want to be married to an old lady when he’s still in his 30s. He’s also perplexed by Elizabeth, who comes from another world that he never got to experience, which leaves him vulnerable to her charms.

Joe also raises monarch caterpillars as a hobby, and Haynes is not the least bit shy about beating the viewer over the head with the metaphor here. I’m all for metaphor and symqbolism in films, but the script here lays it on so thick that you have no room for thought or interpretation, and it ends up a distraction from the tripartite character study that’s at the heart of the film. The script’s ambiguous conclusion forces Elizabeth to rethink much of what she believes she saw and learned while visiting Gracie and Joe, and opens the whole film up to more interpretations, enough so that the caterpillar stuff just wasn’t necessary.

All three leads are excellent, unsurprising for the two who’ve already won Oscars themselves, although the current odds seem to show Moore and Melton on the bubbles for the two supporting categories. It’s possible that May December will only get a nod for original screenplay, which might be merited as it’s looking like the 2023 movie crop ended up a very strong one, but this feels like a film that should earn more acclaim for its actors, without all three of whom it just can’t work. After Haynes’ distracting Velvet Underground documentary, which was sunk by the split-screen gimmick and didn’t give enough story about the band’s incredible influence, it’s good to see him return with a film this complex and challenging.

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→ January 3, 2024
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The Holdovers.

Alexander Payne’s films often depict deeply flawed people in an empathetic way, almost challenging the viewer to root for them in spite of their awfulness – Miles Raymond in Sideways and Jim McAllister in Election come to mind. The Holdovers, Payne’s latest film and a return to form after Downsizing flopped, has a pair of these awful characters at the heart of its story, giving the viewer a window into each of them as they learn to develop empathy for the other – and for other people in general – that they’d previously lacked. (It’s streaming free on Peacock, or you can buy it on Amazon, iTunes, etc.)

Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) is a brusque, old-school instructor of Ancient Civilizations at the Barton School, a tony boarding school in Massachusetts, loathed by students for his ungenerous grading and general classroom manner. The headmaster, angry with Paul over another matter, assigns him to be the one teacher who stays over the Christmas break with the “holdovers,” five students who can’t go home for the holidays for varying reasons. One of them, Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), was supposed to join his mother and stepfather in St. Kitts, but gets a last-minute call that she’s going to St. Kitts alone with her husband on a delayed honeymoon, so Angus must stay on campus, and he’s not happy about it. It gets worse, as the other four boys get to head off on a ski trip, but Angus’s parents are unreachable (or just ignore the calls), so he can’t get permission to leave, stranding him with Paul, the head cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), and the janitor Danny (Naheem Garcia). Mary recently lost her son, a Barton alumnus, in Vietnam, as he couldn’t get a student deferment, with a stark contrast between his fate as a rare Black student at Barton and his many white classmates.

Paul and Mary don’t know each other very well despite both working at the school for what appears to have been about twenty years, and neither knows Angus at all beyond his time in Paul’s class. Once he’s the only student left, Angus starts to act up, with comical and serious consequences, which helps the two get to know each other beyond the classroom. There’s a holiday party thrown by another Barton staffer, a Christmas dinner with just the three of them, an unplanned field trip, a definitely unplanned trip to the hospital, and more seemingly minor events that allow David Hemingson’s script to reveal more layers to each of the characters.

The film takes place over the winter break of 1970-71, a time when men were men, by which I mean they weren’t supposed to talk about or acknowledge feelings. Paul and Angus are cut from that cloth, and just getting to the points where they do reveal an emotion or two, such as Angus’s comments at the Christmas dinner, is a huge challenge for both men; for Angus, as a teenager, it could be seen as a sign of weakness by his peers, while for Paul, the gruff exterior hides some inner disappointment that the film only hints at later on. Mary is more open with her feelings, although they come out a lot more at the holiday party when she’s had a few, and early in the film it’s clear that neither Angus nor Paul is comfortable with even her modest degree of openness. The parting shot of the two men is brilliantly awkward, and dead on for their two characters, especially in that time period.

Randolph seems to be the favorite right now for Best Supporting Actress, and while I’ve only seen one other potential nominee (America Ferrera, for Barbie), it is a tremendous performance in a somewhat limited role. Giamatti was somewhat infamously snubbed for Sideways, earning his one Oscar nomination a year later for Cinderella Man, and while I could see him landing another nod this year, I’m also a little curious if he can play a character who isn’t fundamentally an asshole. I could see The Holdovers getting both of those nominations as well as Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay (GoldDerby shows it as the favorite for the latter), but I’m not sure how much credit here should go to Payne as the director versus the other contributors. The script itself is smart and witty and a great example of showing people developing empathy in a way that also gets the audience to empathize with them. All three lead actors are excellent. I wouldn’t take anything away from Payne here, but it felt to me like the best thing he could do was stay out of the way.

It’s that empathy bit that makes The Holdovers a superlative film rather than just a great one. Getting viewers to side with characters who are unlikeable in tangible ways is a real challenge for writer and actor – not just rooting for them like some anti-hero, but to embrace them as three-dimensional characters who have serious flaws and may not even like themselves. All three actors meet this challenge, and the script puts them in the right situations for them to show the audience who and what they are. Trying to do more would have ruined the magic.

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→ January 2, 2024
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Past Lives.

Past Lives is the first feature from writer-director Celine Song, and became a surprise hit at the U.S. box office, taking in just over $10 million even though it has no stars in the cast and much of the film is in Korean. It’s small and intimate, with only three real characters, yet manages to explore the nature of love and identity as we follow two of those people from their childhood in South Korea to a meeting in New York 24 years later. It’s a wonderful film that barely strikes a single wrong note even as it moves through territory that naturally lends itself to sentiment and cliché. (You can rent it on amazon, iTunes, etc.)

Na Young (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are 12-year-old classmates and academic rivals when we first meet them, but just as they seem to be falling for each other, Nora’s family moves to Toronto, after which she takes on the name Nora Moon. Twelve years later, Hae Sung finds her via a page for her playwright/director father’s latest movie, and the two strike up a very intense relationship over Skype and messaging, one that seems to be headed for something more serious until one of them calls it off due to their careers and the physical distance between them. A dozen years after that, the two connect in person, but the window for them to have an actual romance has closed, and they both have to deal with the weight of their memories and the lost connection to each other.

The title of the film refers to a Korean concept, inyeon, where people are connected over their lives or even multiple lifetimes, to the point that fate or providence is pushing them together. Nora and Hae Sung spend significant time in the film debating whether they have inyeon and are actually meant to be together, although in the end it appears that they don’t, as one of them falls in love with someone else. It would be romantic if it were true, but even Past Lives doesn’t take it as fact and in many ways subverts the concept with what it does to its two protagonists.

Beyond the love story, however, there’s a powerful meditation here on national/ethnic identity and the difficulty of assimilation. Nora left Korea at 12, learning English shortly before their trip, and then emigrated a second time from Canada to the United States. She works diligently to fit into western culture, including taking on a “western” name that non-Koreans could more easily pronounce or remember, in a familiar look at the immigrant story where the younger generation becomes American or Canadian or European and loses some or all connection to their country of birth or their parents’. When Hae Sung appears the second time, by which point they’re 36, she’s moved on with her life enough that his visit throws off her equilibrium, and over several days she becomes more uncomfortable with her feelings and with this intrusion of her past life into her current one. At first, Nora’s the cool one of the two, as she’s married and looks at Hae Sung with some pity because he’s not and it’s clear that he hasn’t entirely moved on. The more they talk, and Hae Sung becomes more open about his feelings, the more it rattles her, dredging up something she’s tried to forget or bury, whether it’s him specifically or something broader about her past.

Lee is a revelation in Past Lives, carrying large portions of the film herself because her character is the conflicted one and we see more of her without Hae Sung than the reverse. I’d only seen her previously in some guest spots on the new Electric Company, but I can’t say I remember her appearances. So much of the communication between Nora and Hae Sung is nonverbal, and both Lee and Teo Yoo are superb at expressing their feelings through gesture or facial expression – the ambivalence Nora feels when Hae Sung visits, her anxiety when he and her husband Arthur (John Magaro) meet, the feeling of being stuck between two people who can’t communicate directly so she’s the translator despite her feelings for and about both men.

The script takes Nora’s perspective more than Hae Sung’s, giving her character more depth while leaving him a little harder to grasp, which would mirror the way she’d view him given the huge chunks of time between their real and virtual meetings. We see more of her life outside of their interactions with each other than we do of his, with Hae Sung’s scenes without Nora mostly times he’s out drinking with his buddies. The Best Actress field is incredibly crowded this year, so Lee may not end up in the final five, but it’s an outstanding performance without which the film wouldn’t be as effective or as affecting.

I’ve seen references to Past Lives as romantic, but I don’t think that’s the apposite word here – it’s about romance, but it’s far more realistic than romantic. A romance might have forced the two together in some unbelievable plot twist or sop to the audience. Such a conclusion would have done a real injustice to the characters and the story here of the sacrifices we make in life and the difficulties many people face when leaving one family, culture, or country for another. Instead, Song weaves a delicate tapestry around her two main characters, maintaining the credibility with the viewer so that we can spend time pondering the what-ifs of this pair, and the what-ifs in our own lives – the relationships, romantic or platonic, that never came to pass because life got in the way. It’s a simple, quiet marvel, and beautiful right through the characters’ anguish when they meet for the last time.

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