"Maestro" is a film about creative restlessness. About wanting to fill your life with as much as you can, about not having to choose who you are but about being everything you are. Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) was many things: composer, conductor, teacher. Married to a woman he loved, father of three children and sexually involved with many men.
He was a lone genius who composed in solitude and a gregarious individual who couldn't even close the bathroom door for fear of missing something. To understand such a person, you have to step into both the heart and the brain, Bradley Cooper seems to reason.
In the film, we therefore see "Lenny" jump on projects and passions, both personal and professional, and then jump on to the next. His music is only heard in short pieces. The language of cinema is the same: the camera flows in and out of scenes, sometimes without beginning or end.
A conversation where Bernstein excitedly explains to future wife Felicia (Carey Mulligan) that they resemble each other because they are both trying to live in truth with themselves, a swipe over a lunch with the mentor who suggests that Bernstein change his name to Burns, who becomes a theater stage where Bernstein is a spectator to his musical number and then suddenly appears in it himself.
In other words: an eclectic collage of an artist's inner and outer life. Always create, always do. Of course, such a personality leaves emotional holes in those closest to him, i.e. his wife and children. "Maestro," in its overwhelming, at times hysterical energy, conveys Bernstein's duality clearly.
You don't leave the salon with extensive Wikipedia knowledge of the great composer, but with respect for the artist Bradley Cooper who has not only completely transformed into Bernstein but also challenged the biopic genre in the best way.