A 17-year-old Steven Spielberg record, going back to the Clint Eastwood war movie Letters of Iwo Jima, has been broken by Maestro, the Bradley Cooper-directed biopic.
Spielberg has played his part in making and producing all manner of movie genres, but there’s a long-standing trend he has that has now been broken by the new film focusing on the life of iconic American composer Leonard Bernstein, played by Cooper, with Carey Mulligan starring as his wife, Felicia.
Maestro is the first film that Spielberg has produced since 2006’s Letters From Iwo Jima, meaning that there has been a 17-year gap between the two films, both rated R, once again showing the mature side of the typically family-friendly director.
Had Spielberg actually directed the film, then it would have been the first time he’d fully handled an R-rated movie since his 2006 disaster movie Munich.
In our review of Maestro, we wrote, “It’s hard to understand what Maestro’s intention is, though. To show Bernstein’s brilliance or portray him as a bit of an egotistical asshole that largely neglected his family despite that brilliance?”
The review continued, “Whatever Cooper’s intention, he seems to have been able to give a surprising insight into the life of one of the most celebrated figures in the music world. As the film’s title suggests, Bernstein could never just be Bernstein but would forever become Maestro, the man with magic at his fingertips.”
Check out the trailer for Maestro below.
