The relationship between Leonard Bernstein and his wife Felicia (played movingly by Carey Mulligan), as portrayed here, is not without its complications. Bernstein is an incredibly talented composer and conductor, but his genius can also be suffocating, a fire that needs to take in all the oxygen in a room. There\u2019s little space for Felicia, outside of her role as Bernstein\u2019s wife. And Bernstein can\u2019t help but embarks upon a series of affairs, each one less discreet than the last. For a time, they go their separate ways, but there\u2019s a tremendous amount of love between Leonard and Felicia, and it becomes clear to both of them that they need each other in their lives. They reconcile, and are genuinely happy for the first time in a long time \u2013 but then Felicia receives a devastating cancer diagnosis, and their world falls apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When she passes away, the Bernstein family is entirely bereft. It\u2019s almost as though no one realized how powerful her presence was until it wasn\u2019t there anymore. We are shown her devastating absence in one brief scene, which feels like a throwaway moment, but is one of Bradley Cooper\u2019s most thoughtful pieces of directing in the entire film. The three Bernstein children \u2013 now grown adults \u2013 pile into the backseat of the family car, like they\u2019d undoubtedly done hundreds of times before. They\u2019re not little kids anymore, and they barely fit, but they squeeze in together. It doesn\u2019t even occur to any of them to move next to their father in the driver\u2019s seat \u2013 even if it did, it\u2019s clear no one can stomach the idea of sitting in the front passenger seat, their mother\u2019s spot. One of them occupying that space would be a tacit acknowledgement that she\u2019s really gone. Staying in the back together is an attempt to cling to normalcy \u2013 although the passenger seat is empty, the emotional weight of the person not there is overwhelming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Leonard climbs into the car, he takes on the fatherly role of chauffeur and gets behind the wheel. For a split second, he rests his arm on the headrest of the empty passenger seat, a familiar and intimate gesture that comes as second nature to him. But before his arm can even make contact with the seat, he pulls it back \u2013 almost immediately, as though it burned him. He too is silently struck by the absence of his wife in the most mundane of familial activities. In Bernstein and his children\u2019s avoidance of the passenger seat, their grief manifests itself as a physical presence \u2013 even if it\u2019s only an empty space. A hole isn\u2019t nothingness, after all, and a void is defined as much by what isn\u2019t there as what is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Over the course of Maestro<\/em>, the relationship between Leonard and Felicia plays out as high drama. The most important scenes showcasing their romantic connection with one another come with pomp and circumstance, from the self-indulgent musical number where Bernstein takes Felicia through a revue of his most famous compositions to the towering church performance that he conducts, full of emotion, as he and Felicia reconcile. Both of them are high-energy people who seem to feel the need to be \u201con\u201d all the time, for better or worse, so it makes sense that so few of their romantic beats would speak softly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But because of this tendency towards the grandiose \u2013 both between the characters and with Bradley Cooper\u2019s directorial style in general \u2013 it makes the scene in the car after Felicia\u2019s death all the more impactful. It doesn\u2019t come accompanied with the soaring crescendo of a full orchestra or Cooper contorting himself into knots to prove himself worthy of an Oscar, and perhaps for that reason alone it stands out as one of the most surprising and emotionally genuine moments in Maestro<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Maestro” is currently streaming on Netflix<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/maestro2-1024x576.jpg\")
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