The American actor directs, produces and stars in ‘Maestro’, the ‘biopic’ about the musician Leonard Bernstein that has been promoted for months as one of the films to beat in the next awards season
Although until not long ago Bradley Cooper’s most recognizable merit was being the handsome man from ‘The Hangover’, over the years he has come to add nine nominations for Oscar. And now he’s decided that it’s about time they gave him the damned statuette, or at least that’s what can be deduced from his new movie, with which he now aspires to the title. Golden Lion of the venice festival and of which he is the director, producer, screenwriter and protagonist.
‘Teacher‘, indeed, has all the features that Hollywood Academy voters tend to like. It is set in show business; its main character was not only a real person but, specifically, one of the most important musicians of the 20th century, leonard bernstein; it has required a showy physical transformation from Cooper to play him, and the story contains ingredients of great tragic potential, such as repressed homosexuality and terminal illness. In addition to all this, ‘Maestro’ has been promoted for months as one of the films to beat in the next awards season, something to which the stupid controversy in which it was recently involved on social networks has contributed: there was who, for some reason, decided that the prosthetic nose that Cooper looks on screen is antisemitic. Today, he has not been able to comment on it, because he has not traveled to Venice: ‘Maestro’ is a Netflix production, and the strike of American actors has prevented him from doing so.
The film reviews the stormy sentimental union that the author of the soundtracks of films such as ‘West Side Story’ and ‘The Law of Silence’ kept with Felicia Montealegre, played by Carey Mulligan, and accepts the theory -so widespread among ‘biopics’ about artists- according to which geniuses must be forgiven for almost everything. As she does so, she displays a minutely detailed design: it’s impeccable when it comes to reconstructing the different eras through which history passes, perfectly recreates some of Bernstein’s most iconic performances, incorporates the fair amount of musical numbers and sound allusions to the work of the conductor and composer, offering both Cooper and Mulligan numerous moments of studied acting brilliance, which he in particular uses for acting a lot. It is a film in which everything is in its place, and that does not present any miscalculation but does show a lot of excess calculation or, in other words, that has no soul. And, of course, all of that is going to make no difference as Cooper picks up one award after another over the next few months.
Polanski hits rock bottom
When it became known that Roman Polanski He was not going to travel to the Mostra to present his new Feature Film, ‘The Palace‘, the absence was attributed to his advanced age – he is 90 years old – or to the controversy that he generates wherever he goes because of the sexual crimes for which he was convicted and those attributed to him. After seeing the film, presented today out of competition, the most sensible thing to do is assume that she has not come because she is ashamed of her. Set in the typical mess hotel, it is based on the kind of humor that one attributes to comedic aces such as Los Morancos, Raúl Sender, la Bombi and Jaimito Borromeo, and includes jokes about poop, vomit, belch and dogs that have sex with penguins Besides, fatphobe, islamophobic, russophobic and misogynist -in that sense, it is tempting to interpret it as a cut from Polanski’s sleeve to all those who demand its cancellation-, and it is not only the worst film of the Polish careerFurthermore, a complete mystery: no one could have imagined that he was capable of sinking so low.
In its own way, ‘The Palace’ is a radical film, although not as much as the new one from the American Harmony Korine, ‘Aggro Dr1ft’. Filmed entirely with thermal cameras, it is made up of a succession of obviously improvised scenes where half-naked women twerk or dance with crotch flares, gangsters strutting with their guns, villains in demonic masks shaking their pelvises and Jordi Molla -yes, our Jordi Mollà- turned, according to his own words into “the best assassin in the world”; Altogether, it is such a delirious work that at times it reaches the sublimebut in general it is hardly bearable. This is the first production by EDGLRD, a multidisciplinary company founded by Korine -in his day, one of the most picturesque figures of American indie cinema- with the aim of developing new methods of artistic creation. We wish you good luck.