Stills from the movie "Music Master" (2023). File picture
During the holidays, when walking on the streets of Los Angeles, you can see at any time that the outer coverings of buses have been replaced by promotional posters for Bradley Cooper’s new film "Maestro". My social network application It also opens with a trailer for the movie. I'm really looking forward to this movie, but not because of the overwhelming publicity.
At this time last year, I was forced to stay in bed for a long time due to an attack of sciatica. The physical pain was superimposed on the anxiety about the future during the inflationary period. The only thing that could calm my mood was Leonard Bernstein's 1958 TV program "Young People's Concerts" recorded with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. "(young people's concert). Don’t get me wrong, I am not a classical music enthusiast. My interest in it is entirely to use music to enhance my understanding of poetry. However, these thirteen master classes made me, a layman, listen with gusto, and even gave me an important enlightenment in life: if I feel lost, frustrated and helpless, the best way to deal with it is to focus on "beauty". What wounds cannot be healed by "beauty".
The higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. I did not see the master in the biographical film "The Music Master", only the private life of the master Bernstein. This is an era that advocates "identity labels", especially in the United States. The more you can speak out your non-mainstream identity label in a high-profile and confident manner, the braver and more righteous you appear, and the more worthy of other people's likes and reposts. Because Bernstein's homosexuality (or should I say bisexuality) is rarely known to outsiders, Cooper, who revealed this secret to the public, is particularly "deep", and the Bernstein film he directed and starred in Therefore, it appears "complicated" (said many mainstream American media, including the New York Times). However, what I saw was a multi-dimensional flattened Bernstein. There is a scene in the first half of the movie where after marriage, he meets his former boyfriend, clarinetist David Oppenheimer, in the park. Bomer), who was walking with his new wife, holding a baby in his arms. Bernstein said to the baby lightly: "I slept with both your parents." It seemed that he was worried that the audience was too stupid. , could not understand the hints at the beginning of the film, so the director had to clearly inform the master of his unique sexual orientation.
In this way, the movie pieced together the master's romantic affairs in a superficial way (the British "Guardian" called it a "scrapbook"), ignoring the more complicated content of the emotional relationship: in the middle of the last century when Bernstein was active In the United States, homosexuality is still regarded as a taboo by mainstream culture. The older the master, the more "specific" the type of emotional object - they are all young and talented "little fresh meat" in the classical orchestra. The reason is that the master himself is born with a hopeless romantic mood, or he uses the power at hand to coerce the other party into embracing him, or this is simply the default trend in the New York art circle, and "conservative" people are rebelling against it. Scorned by the art world? The movie has no pursuit, leaving no beginning or end. As a result, when the wife Felicia Montelegre (played by Carey Mulligan) finally couldn't bear it anymore, she had a big quarrel with her husband. The most serious excuse was , "You (Bernstein) don't love human beings at all as you said, but quite the opposite." You know, the original weight of this sentence should be equivalent to the physical relationship between husband and wife in the movie "A Marriage Story" The last thing the husband said to his wife during the attack was "I hope you go out and get hit by a car right now." However, because Bernstein's personality presentation is very limited, I don't know whether he loves human beings or whether he "loves human beings" What exactly does it mean? Although Mulligan's performance was very difficult, I was confused, and I also felt that the master's wife was very good at quarreling.
Equally flat is Bernstein’s “American Identity.” He is the first American to become an international orchestra conductor, but the only scene in the movie that mentions this identity is when he is having dinner with his mentor and mentor. The latter believes that his Jewish identity will not be recognized by mainstream society, and he also It was suggested that he change his last name to the more American-sounding "Burns."The director wanted to highlight the discrimination suffered by ethnic minorities in the United States, but ignored Bernstein's American cultural characteristics that were very different from those of contemporary European conductors. The film reproduced the ballet "Fancy Liberty" composed by Bernstein. "(fancy free), which was inspired by the controversial gay pornographic illustrations of American painter Paul Cadmus; the famous musical "West Side Story" is also an American adaptation of "Romeo and Juliet" (based on conflicts between Puerto Rican immigrants and native white immigrants). More importantly, there seems to be no gap between high art and popular art in Bernstein's eyes, which is also closely related to contemporary American culture: when cartoons such as "Bugs Bunny" and "Tom and Jerry" first came out, Bugs Bunny Both Tom and Tom often perform piano solos with superb skills! In the "Snoopy" comics, there is the character Schroeder, a musical genius, whose idol is Beethoven. Looking back on Bernstein's achievements today, people will praise him for popularizing classical music to the American public and educating a large number of young classical music lovers. However, when listening to the "Young People's Concert", I was surprised that Bernstein often compared American pop culture figures such as "Superman", which was very natural. Perhaps he and his contemporaries watched Disney animation and "Superman". From the perspective of young people who grew up with "Snoopy", classical music itself is a "cool" thing.
To a certain extent, you can also say that if Bugs Bunny and Tom Cat were born today, they would probably be keen to talk about their identity tags, because the latter is the most "cool" thing in our time (think about 2016 of the Disney animated film "Zootopia"). I can even vaguely imagine Cooper's excitement when he discovered Bernstein's "gossip": "That's great, no one has photographed his sexual orientation, he will definitely win an award!" Every era has its funny moments, It is impossible for these former masters to imagine that they were "rediscovered" because of their non-mainstream sexual orientation.
Does all this imply that classical music is not “cool” enough in America today? I don’t know, because since the 1972 crime movie "A Clockwork Orange" directed by Stanley Kubrick, perverted murderers seem to be particularly obsessed with classical music, especially Beethoven and Bach. This phenomenon has been shown on the big screen to this day. There is no end yet. If I were a parent, I would have to consider whether to let my child learn piano.
Qian Jianan
Editor in charge Xing Renyan
