Despite all the talk of noses in Bradley Cooper’s already-controversial portrayal of the legendary composer Leonard Bernstein, the latest trailer for Netflix’s Oscars offering Maestro focuses on the plot. Carey Mulligan and her Katharine Hepburn-inspired, Mid-Atlantic accent steal the spotlight from Cooper’s schnoz as the trailer reveals that living with the world’s most revered composer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Mulligan plays Felicia, Bernstein’s wife, who learns from Berstein’s sister Shirley (Sarah Silverman) that “there’s a price for being in my brother’s orbit.”
The price she pays is acting as a beard for the closeted Bernstein. The trailer offers no shortage of shots of Mulligan laughing and crying, sharing intimate moments with Cooper’s Bernstein, and watching on as he holds the hand of his male lovers. Curiously, though, the spot features no conversation over whether or not the composer’s nose is the correct size or whether it even needs to be in the movie.
Not to be outdone, Cooper also made a distinctive vocal choice, giving his Bernstein nasally, appropriately New York accent. Though we assume his impression of Bernstein comes from a painstaking effort to recreate the exact intonations of his subject, it also sounds like he’s got a bit of a cold. Perhaps this is a side effect of the heavy prosthetics applied to his features, which makes the whole thing seem like a happy accident.
But the accents are of a piece with the trailer, which basks in an old-fashioned sensibility. In addition to recalling the trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, where a piano is also the meeting point between star-crossed lovers, Maestro resembles melodramas of old—though that could be the gravitas lent by Bernstein’s music and Cooper’s sweeping camera. While we haven’t seen the movie, we can say without reservation that it cuts a good trailer.
Maestro will hit theaters for a limited run on November 22 and stream on Netflix on December 20.