In the black-and-white scenes, there were a lot of attempts at art-house noir, and I kept saying to myself, that shot's Welles, or that one's Carol Reed, or this is Fellini or Bergman. After a while, the Wellesian influence, especially the characters constantly talking over one another, bordered on parody and my annoyance with the prosthetic nose, so unnecessary and distracting, reminded me that Welles himself was known for always wearing a prosthetic nose in his roles because his real nose was so small and undramatic. Was Cooper trying to emulate the great director? Keep an eye out for whether he starts doing commercials for wine or frozen peas.
Fundamentally, I feel I know nothing about Bernstein from all this. The guy was a musical genius but there's no attempt here to illuminate why, or to really connect the frenetic, nasally voiced character on the screen with the gorgeous music he created. The sometimes horrific makeup job buried Cooper so that some scenes looked like attempts to re-enact famous photos of Bernstein (like Laguna Beach's annual "Pageant of the Masters" ) and they were successful at that, albeit briefly, and to what end? The movie told me more about his wife, who comes across as a more realized, more complex character. Carey Mulligan deserves a Best-Actress nomination but Cooper's probably inevitable nod should be for Best Supporting Actor if at all.
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