Could talent/genius be a burden?

How interesting it would be I wondermdashafter catching Bradley Cooperrsquos Maestro on Netflix twicemdashto observe Cooper 48 on the filmrsquos set where he convincingly channels musician Leonard Bernstein ageing between 25 to 69And then for Cooper in prosthetic makeup to slip out of this trancelike state off and on giving practical instructions to cast and crew as directormdashgoing back inside Bernstein as the camera rolls againMagical yet schizophrenic no Thatrsquos what I might wanna ask Cooper to explain To be fair I have briefly metinterviewed him once Although that doesnrsquot countmdashgiven this was on the sets of Todd Phillipsrsquos The Hangover Part II in Bangkok circa 2010As it is that brocode franchise I guess may be harder to top in such times when humans are measuring their worth by the size of their virtuous outrageThe actor in A Star Is BornIf their creativity went along the same route however both Cooper and Phillipsmdashwho later made the disturbingly menacing Joker 2019mdashwouldrsquove forever been known for the hungama Hangover the worldrsquos unlikeliest blockbusterIn the same way that Bernstein 191890 Cooperrsquos subject in Maestro 2023 gets most identified with the musical West Side Story I walked out halfway into that fullblown Broadway production in Mumbai recentlymdashrealising that West Side Story hardly has as memorable a soundtrack for such a popular longrunning musicalBernstein was a multihyphenate in musicmdashconductor composer teachermentor pianist authorhellip As actorwriterdirector also producer along with Martin Scorsese Steven Spielberg Cooper isnrsquot so interested in Bernsteinrsquos professional biography as his delightfully complicated relationshipmarriage with Felicia Montealegre Carey MulliganFocusing on one thing Which is just as well You can basically rattle off a wellknown public figurersquos Wikipedialike background early to later life career achievements etc over a string of sentences for expository dialogue anywayAs Maestro cleverly does What remains therefore is a wholly intimate film where you actually meet Bernstein the man inside insteadItrsquos still the big biopic so to say Its size determined by its depth rather than merely scalemdashwith events from Bernsteinrsquos life so finely crosscutting on the edit seamlessly structured around Bernsteinrsquos music both as foreground and background scoreIrsquom told Spielberg offered Cooper to direct Maestro while he was still watching A Star Is Born 2018 the staractorrsquos insanely emotional directorial debutI suspect Spielbergrsquos own interest in Bernstein couldrsquove emanated from the fact that he eventually filmed West Side Story 2021 What do you sense in common between A Star Is Born and MaestroThat theyrsquore about artistes of course Centred on music yes That theyrsquore about love less transactional inherently melancholic That they examine inner lives of talented people in such a way that you begin to question if talentgenius itself is often a burdenmdashit demands much from self also because the world relentlessly does the sameOne of my favourite casually delivered lines in Maestro being when Bernstein Cooper tells wife Montealegre during a domestic squabble ldquoYou remember the Chamberlain movie we saw last week He said lsquoHow could I compete with the man you think I amrsquordquoYoursquore bound to disappoint We arrive at this perspective both in A Star Is Born and Maestro because they strike at the heart of griefItrsquos only when you view life in the context of deathmdashthat itrsquos merely a distraction frommdasha lot of the petty egos controlling impulses and expectations from peers and partner start to make sense for what they really are The partner sees it similarly I donrsquot know how much you can see of yourself in Maestro But therersquos a conflict at the core of Bernsteinrsquos life that I tend to grapple with sometimesBernstein is a conductor with an altogether external life Hersquos also a composer that involves creation hence immense solitude Bernstein is selfadmittedly a peoplersquos person He finds that interfering with his creative output But hersquos okay with itEither way both as performer and writerdirector Cooper seems to have delivered a masterpiece with Maestro sufficiently balancing Bernsteinrsquos own dilemma himselfMaybe because I end up looking at everything through an Indian lens for the longest Irsquod think of Cooper as a Ranveer Singh kinda figure in Hollywood while Ranbir Kapoor seemed more inspired by Ryan GoslingItrsquos only when you learn more about vulnerable jock Cooperrsquos own lifemdashhis personal anxieties over talent potential ambitions consequent substance abuse he quit drinking in 2004mdashthat you figure what makes him such a sensitive star filmmaker to pull off an incredibly empathetic doublebill Hersquos so uniquely shorn of being judgmental towards his naturally flawed lead charactersWhether as the depressive alcoholic countrysinger Jack progressively drowning in the well of jealousy and selfdoubt in A Star is Born Or as Maestrorsquos polyamorous bisexual Bernstein equally in love with his wife hersquos 100 per cent honest with How does Cooper direct simultaneouslyOn Hangover sets Phillips says in a Directors Guild interaction Cooper would follow him around like an obsessed lover He was learning his craftHe wouldrsquove learnt a thing or two from Clint Eastwood 93 who wouldrsquove died as Dirty Harry too if he didnrsquot direct some great filmsmdashtwo of them American Sniper 2014 and The Mule 2018 with Cooper as his muse after allMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper