Oscar Seasoning: Fine, Let’s Talk About Bradley Cooper

The writer-director-star of Maestro really wants that Oscar, and boy does he not deserve it for this particular movie…

Let me preface this by saying that I do not dislike Bradley Cooper. I like a lot of his work, particularly the roles where he allows himself to shake off the restrictions of perfection and goes wild. He’s perfectly charming, I’ve heard he’s a gentleman to work with, and I truly think he should have been Oscar-nominated for Nightmare Alley. I don’t even dislike him choosing to become a director in the most ego-driven manner possible. But whenever I find myself talking about Cooper, I can hear the whine of tedium enter my voice. This awards season has found me especially guilty of this, with Maestro being my least favourite Best Picture nominee by a wide margin.

(This is also the hottest Bradley Cooper has ever looked. I will not be taking any questions on this subject.)

Notably, however, I have not been alone in this endeavour. This Oscar cycle has seen Cooper emerge, if not as a full-on villain then at least as the one it’s okay to root against. Social media laughed when he went home from the Golden Globes empty-handed and seemed to go a touch “hello darkness, my old friend” during Cillian Murphy’s acceptance speech. In a discourse-heavy season, Maestro has had its fair share of controversies, but even then, there’s this growing sense that we just don’t want to deal with Cooper and his evident thirst. It’s not even as funny as Leonardo DiCaprio’s tight-smiled self-flagellation (and his eventual Oscar win was bolstered by years of nostalgia for a true megastar we’d all grown up with.)

It's not as though people hate Cooper. He’s not Chris Pratt. This isn’t a guy without talent, both in front of and behind the camera. Clearly, he’s popular among his peers, enough to land a slew of nominations, including ones for Picture, Actor, Actress, and screenplay. Yet, for me, it’s hard to get over the ways his rudderless drive leaves both him and his work afloat, close to great yet hindered by his inability to get out of the spotlight.

I really did not like Maestro. I was kind of baffled by reviews that heralded it as a masterpiece that transcended the biopic form because all the things that weakened its narrative were rooted in its status as a run-of-the-mill biopic. Cooper plays the legendary Leonard Bernstein, drenched in prosthetics that kind of make him look like the composer, while Carey Mulligan plays his wife Felicia. The film focuses on their relationship through the decades, a choice that leaves a genius’s talents on the sidelines as a novelty rather than a crucial part of his very being. That combined with the suspect depiction of Bernstein’s sexuality, positioning his affairs with men almost as nuisances, made the movie feel as though the words “approved by Bernstein’s kids and estate” were emblazoned across every page of the script.

This is the conflict that leaves me so confused and often irritated by Cooper: he is a figure of intense ambition who tempers it in his directorial work to more neatly adhere to a middlebrow, Oscar-approved vision. He did it with A Star is Born, a film with a great first half and a weak second that seemed to miss much of what the former established. The rockstar drama, one of Hollywood’s most tragic and enduring narratives, rose thanks to great chemistry and an earnest romantic centre. That was largely eschewed in the third act as Cooper pulled the focus from Lady Gaga to himself. All the set-up of Gaga’s character (whose maiden name is never revealed, dude) being a performer aware of the necessary performativity of her craft is dropped because BCoop gets mad that she isn’t “true to herself.” She was doing drag! She knows what it means to put on a persona! Why else would you hire Lady Gaga!?

Maestro has a similar issue. It’s not that one would want or expect a Leonard Bernstein movie to be about anyone but Leonard Bernstein, but the film ends up trying to be about this incredible power couple, all while omitting half the historical details that made Felicia so exciting. But it’s not just Felicia who suffers as a result. Bernstein himself is curiously defanged, his creative process watered down to another biopic beat. To be more specific, he’s diluted into a series of actorly beats. It’s like a bingo card of For Your Consideration: a biopic, a closeted man, a big showy conducting scene, that bloody nose…

I honestly do not mind Cooper being a tad egomaniacal. Hell, I would like more vaulting ambition in the business. I think Margot Robbie, for instance, is far more fascinating a Hollywood figure now that she’s a savvy producer paving a trail for the likes of Greta Gerwig, Cathy Yan, and Emerald Fennell. Cooper deciding to go from the hot dude in The Hangover to an auteur’s favourite and filmmaker talent is genuinely commendable. He seems clearly influenced by the likes of Warren Beatty, a fellow you’re-so-vain king who took advantage of his industry clout to make stuff like Reds. But Warren, for all his egomania, also has a philosophy. He has political verve and ideas he was desperate to use cinema to explore. I don’t see that with Cooper. He took Leonard Bernstein’s life and made it into an Oscar vehicle, which is anti-ambition. I do not know why that film exists other than to give Cooper some Oscar clips. And that sucks. Seriously, that’s Leonard Bernstein! You snatched away Jake Gyllenhaal’s dream project, put on a very uncomfortable nose to play a Jewish man, beat yourself for years to perfect conducting skills, and all for that? What would it look like if he’d given Maestro over to someone like Marielle Heller or Jonathan Glazer. A better film, surely but would that have meant less glory for him?

(This post is partly a plug for Nightmare Alley, I must admit.)

I’ve seen some people wonder if the lack of a Best Director nod two movies in a row is the industry’s way of snubbing him, for lack of a better word. I doubt that, given that he’s still nominated as an actor, writer, and producer, but you can see how that narrative formed. He campaigned vigorously as the full package and it didn’t land in that key category. It was a very competitive year, and frankly, there are five or six directors not shortlisted who I would have put over him. The directors’ branch has no beef with actors going behind the camera, but they do prize real vision. In that way, Maestro just could not compete with Poor Things, Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, Oppenheimer, or Killers of the Flower Moon. By contrast, Cooper felt like a director working on rails, and that can land in a weaker year, but not when your competition is firing on all cylinders. Imagine Cooper’s The Zone of Interest… yikes…

I believe Cooper has a truly great film in him as a director, but I don’t think it will happen with him acting as director, writer and star. He needs to relinquish at least one of those jobs for the full package to emerge. I want to see what he does when he isn’t in the midst of a flop-sweat hunt for approval from the industry or awards bodies. There’s a reason my favourite performance of his is in Nightmare Alley, a film where he is utterly unconcerned with being appealing or liked. Hell, I think he’s excellent as a CGI raccoon in the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy because he doesn’t need to showboat for a camera. I want to see him relax, let his freak flag fly once more. He will win an Oscar one day, although I doubt it’ll be this year (team Cillian but I think Paul Giamatti might take it.) His focus got him this far, but with all that power and privilege in his hands now, surely he can afford to swing for the fences and do something unexpected? I’ll take that over another Maestro.

Stay tuned over the next several weeks for even more Oscar Seasoning! Subscribe for more, including the paid option which includes weekly gossip roundups, the book club, and future projects. If you don’t want to give Substack any money (understandable) but would still like to support me, I have a Ko-Fi page!