One of the more eye-opening aspects of the “Maestro” trailer, which Netflix released yesterday ahead of its splashy September 2 premiere at the Venice Film Festival, was the fake nose that Bradley Cooper wears to approximate fabled composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein.
Not bothered by Cooper’s reverse nose-job were Berenstein’s own children: “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose,” they wrote on the platform formerly known as Twitter.
“Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well,” they said. There you have it: the nose stays in the picture.
An additional statement that the Bernstein children (Jamie, Alexander and Nina) shared read, in part: “Any strident complaints around this issue strike us above all as disingenuous attempts to bring a successful person down a notch – a practice we observed all too often perpetrated on our own father.”
The statement continued: “At all times during the making of this film, we could feel the profound respect and yes, the love that Bradley brought to his portrait of Leonard Bernstein and his wife, our mother Felicia.”
The ADL, a Jewish civil rights organization, said the prosthetic was not antisemitic.
“Throughout history, Jews were often portrayed in antisemitic films and propaganda as evil caricatures with large, hooked noses,” the ADL said in a statement. “This film, which is a biopic on the legendary conductor Leonard Bernstein, is not that.”
One tweet (X?) suggested that Cooper’s prosthetic was “slightly sinister” because Cooper’s nose has the same general shape and size of Bernstein’s. (It has almost 17 thousand likes.) Another, with almost 30 thousand likes, said: “This isn’t about making a non-Jewish actor look more like Leonard Bernstein; it’s about making a non-Jewish actor look more like a Jewish stereotype.” There was also sharing of think pieces written while the film was still in production about whether or not the prosthetic nose was “necessary.”
Cooper not only stars as Bernstein but co-wrote the screenplay (with “Spotlight” scribe Josh Singer), directed and produced the film, which also stars Carey Mulligan (as Felicia), Matt Bomer, Maya Hawke and Sarah Silverman. It is his first film as a director since 2018’s Oscar-winning “A Star is Born.”
You can decide whether the prosthetic was appropriate when “Maestro” opens in select theaters in November and is on Netflix on December 20.
