One of the most highly anticipated films of 2023, Bradley Cooper’s Maestro, now streaming on Netflix, has been in the works for years.

Actor-writer-producer-director Cooper first became enamored of conducting an orchestra at the age of 8, 40 years ago. He co-wrote the screenplay about the most famous of modern conductors, Leonard Bernstein (1918-2000), with Josh Singer, who won an Oscar for writing 2015’s Spotlight, which he had co-written with that film’s director, Tom McCarthy.

In the planning stages when Cooper’s first directorial effort, A Star Is Born, was released in 2016, both Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg were approached to direct Maestro but both allegedly deferred to Cooper after seeing what he did with A Star Is Born. Instead, they both became producers of the film, the first time the two legendary producer-directors collaborated on any film.

Initial speculation was that the film would be a standard biopic about the life of a great man, but word soon spread that it would be more about the conductor-composer’s marriage complicated by his bisexual lifestyle than it would be about his career.

Before the film’s first showing at the Venice Film Festival in September it was announced that the film’s emphasis would indeed be on Bernstein’s marriage and that Carey Mulligan as his wife Felicia (1922-1978) would receive top billing. This led to rumors that Mulligan’s role would perhaps be larger than Cooper’s. That was reinforced by the film’s initial trailer in which the spotlight was on her.

In truth the film is really all about Bernstein, or more precisely about Cooper as Bernstein. It begins and ends with him. Mulligan for the most part is reduced to playing a supporting role in the great man’s life.

While most biographical films give you some hint of its subject’s life work, you would be hard-pressed to learn anything about Bernstein’s career from the film which only gives you snippets of the original 1956 Broadway production of Candide and nothing of Broadway’s Wonderful Town or West Side Story. The excerpt of On the Town heard on the soundtrack is from the 2014 revival of the show not from the original 1944 production.

Little if anything is shown of his remarkable TV career and his concerts are only briefly shown except for a 6 ½ minute excerpt from Mass which was commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onasis who is not given mention.

Mulligan’s best scene is arguably the one in which she confronts him about his infidelities on Thanksgiving Day in the mid-1970s while Macy’s parade is going by with the Snoopy balloon clearly visible next to his apartment’s windows facing Central Park West from the famed Dakota where he was the second most famous resident at the time next to John Lennon.

The actress also shines in her last scenes as she lies dying in agony from the cancer caused by a lifetime of cigarette smoking.

Third billed Matt Bomer has less than five minutes screen time as Bernstein’s first male lover. Little indication is given that the musician named David played by Bomer is David Oppenheim (1922-2007) who had a five-year relationship with the four years older Bernstein beginning in 1942. The relationship ended when Bernstein started showing interest in future wife Felicia, but it was Oppenheim who married first. The first of his three marriages was to Judy Holliday that lasted for ten years from 1948-1958 at the height of her career. Their son Jonathan Oppenheim (1952-2020) was an award-winning documentarian.

Although they have limited screen time, it is interesting to note that the three actors playing Bernstein’s children are all related to famous actors. Maya Hawke is the daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. Sam Nivola is the son of Alessandro Nivola and Emily Mortimer. Alexa Swinton is a distant cousin of Tilda Swinton.

Although what’s on the screen is very good, the film is not at all the masterpiece its long gestation led us to believe it would be.

Cooper and Mulligan will almost certainly be nominated for acting Oscars, but I don’t see either of them winning. Cooper could also be nominated for Best Picture if the film lands among this year’s ten nominees, but early predictions that he would be nominated for directing and writing as well seem unlikely.

Nominations for Best Cinematography, Sound, and Makeup and Hairstyling are quite possible.

Now streaming on Amazon Prime, Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, her first directorial effort since Promising Young Woman for which she won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, was another of the year’s most highly anticipated films.

The film, which plays like a modern version of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley beginning in 2006, is beautifully photographed with spectacular set designs, providing strong roles for Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, and Richard E. Grant among others.

Keoghan has the central role of the duplicitous schemer who works his way into the life of devilishly handsome Elordi with whom he is infatuated. Pike and Grant are Elordi’s parents, the idle rich owners of the spectacular Saltburn estate.

In addition to The Talented Mr. Ripley, first filmed in 1960 as Purple Noon and under its original title in 1999, the film is also highly reminiscent of Kind Hearts and Coronets filmed in 1949, Teorama filmed in 1968, and Something for Everyone filmed in 1970. If there is anything in it that I would change it is that I would show the character’s most deceitful deeds as they occur, not leave them until the end when you know all along that he had to have done the things he did.

Keoghan, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for last year’s The Banshees of Inisherin, is tremendous in the lead role but he is unlikely to receive an Oscar nomination again this year due to the tough competition among this year’s leading actors. If any of the actors pull off an Oscar nod this year, it is likely to be Pike who is hilarious as Elordi’s inquisitive mother.

Arguably a lesser film overall than Maestro, Saltburn nevertheless delivers on its promises whereas Maestro does not.

Happy viewing.