Nose Job - - Maestro (2023, USA, Color and B/W, 129 min) - - 30 December 2023

Recommended. This is - - arguably  - - the age of bewildered sexuality and gender in the movies. And given the variations - - within and between - - these human qualities, movies need to be as fluid as untrammeled personalities. But there was a time when the current candor did not exist. And that is the proscenium for Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s (Silver Lining Playbook), exuberant, one-man performance as Leonard Bernstein. Berstein’s sexual ambiguity included a marriage to a star in her own right, Felicia Montealegre (Studio One), played with brilliant nuance and a boffo Mid-Atlantic accent by Cary Mulligan (Promising Young Woman). This is Mulligan’s best work ever, showing the monstrous, heartrending, - - and occasionally - - glorious experience of marriage to a genius. The story’s culmination comes in the 1973 performance of Mahler’s 2nd Symphony at Ely Cathedral. Bernstein’s concluding ecstasy and his passionate off-stage embrace of Montealegre, despite their turmoil, is the perfect metaphor for their life together.