REVIEW Maestro (Netflix)

With its artistic, cinematic flourishes, fractured storytelling and seemingly wartsand-all depiction of a complicated character, it’s clear that director, co-writer and star Bradley Cooper wants this to be his Citizen Kane.

But while there’s much to admire about his lovingly constructed and crafted biopic of the incredibly talented composer, conductor and general music genius Leonard Bernstein, Maestro is a hard film to love. Whether that’s to do with the thematic similarities to Cooper’s take on

A Star is Born (the film that persuaded both Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg to hand over the reins of the long-planned project to him), his Bernstein’s sometimes callous treatment of others, or because it feels a little too cool and calculating (the camera regularly lingers on its leads’ emotive reactions, match cuts abound and we toggle between almost oversaturated colour and crisp black and white to denote time periods) in its depiction and design (especially compared with that other recent composer drama – Todd Field’s bravura and occasionally bonkers Tar)

I’m not entirely sure, but the combination leaves you merely solidly impressed, rather than truly inspired.

Once again proving her versatility, Carey Mulligan lights up the screen as she provides the real heart and soul of Maestro as Bernstein’s wife Felicia Montealegre. There’s a moment of character revelation that is truly breathtaking and heartbreaking.

If only Maestro was a little more focused on that and less on wanting to be “a work of art that proposes questions”, to paraphrase its opening Bernstein quote, then this would have likely been not only an award-season frontrunner, but my favourite film of the past year.