Bradley Cooper is getting into the producer and director’s seat for Netflix’s Maestro, by which he stars as American conductor and cultural icon Leonard Bernstein. The movie, which particulars the lifelong relationship between Bernstein and spouse Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein — performed by Carey Mulligan — launched its first trailer this week.
The trailer begins out with Bernstein and Montealegre sitting again to again in the midst of a grassy area, enjoying a number-guessing recreation. After shouting out a number of fallacious numbers, Montealegre suggests the budding star “attempt to simply focus.” Bernstein quips, “Perhaps I ought to cease and assume for a second,” to which she replies, “You need to cease and assume as a result of I’m sending it to you … oh, we have to construct up a really robust connection.”
Scenes from Bernstein’s life then play in succession, from him falling in love with Montealegre and conducting a younger choir, to receiving excessive reward from folks inside the music trade and having extramarital affairs with males. The trailer concludes with the pair strolling with their arms wrapped round one another towards an space surrounded by bushes.
Following the trailer’s arrival, Cooper and the movie obtained some backlash for the prominence of the prosthetic nostril Cooper wears, with some claiming it to be an anti-Semitic costuming alternative. “The genuinely insane half is that customary pre-prosthetic Bradley Cooper seems to be way more just like the historic Leonard Bernstein than the movie model,” one Twitter person wrote. One other added, “This isn’t about making a non-Jewish actor look extra like Leonard Bernstein; it’s about making a non-Jewish actor look extra like a Jewish stereotype.”
Bernstein’s three youngsters, Jamie, Alexander and Nina Bernstein, chimed in on the discourse, stating that they have been largely included within the means of the movie. The household moreover said that their father would probably not have a difficulty with the usage of a prosthetic nostril getting used to convey his character to life.
“It breaks our hearts to see any misrepresentations or misunderstandings of his efforts. It occurs to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a pleasant, huge nostril,” the youngsters shared in an announcement posted to Instagram. “Bradley selected to make use of make-up to amplify his resemblance, and we’re completely effective with that. We’re additionally sure that our dad would have been effective with it as nicely. Any strident complaints round this situation strike us above all as disingenuous makes an attempt to convey a profitable particular person down a notch — a apply we noticed all too typically perpetrated on our personal father.”
Maestro is scheduled to reach Dec. 20 on Netflix and might be proven in choose theaters beginning Nov. 22. The movie will premiere on the New York Movie Competition on Oct. 2 at David Geffen Corridor, the place the New York Philharmonic, which Bernstein led for over a decade, performs.
Watch the trailer for Maestro within the video above, and see feedback about Cooper’s look — in addition to the assertion from the Bernstein household — beneath.