Outrage over Bradley Cooper's Maestro might be misplaced

Online outcry around Bradley Cooper's portrayal of Leonard Bernstein is at best premature.

A few days ago, Netflix released the first trailer for the film Maestro, a biopic about composer Leonard Bernstein directed by and starring Bradley Cooper.

What has followed is a social media frenzy concerned with only one detail of the initial images from the film which will debut at the Venice Film Festival before being released to the public in December: Bradley Cooper’s nose. 

Cooper, in the released images and trailer is wearing a prosthetic nose. This sparked a fire storm that has spiraled from discussing whether the nose is inappropriate to whether Cooper should be portraying Bernstein at all. 

Before delving into any of the arguments that have been made regarding the prosthetic nose, or my own feelings on the matter, it is necessary to note that Bernstein’s children have weighed in the issue. They shared that they were, in fact, consulted on the decisions made for the film, including how Cooper would look when portraying their father, saying: “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. 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.” That Bernstein's family has okayed the depiction should be sufficient, but since it evidently has not been for so many, let’s talk about it. 

As members of a minority who have not always been kindly depicted in film, it is only natural to be a little touchy around the way Jewish characters are portrayed. I have certainly felt this way on many occasions, most recently when watching and commenting on the film You People. There is a long history of stereotypical portrayals of Jews as having very large noses, images which for many harken back to the Antisemitic tropes depicted in the Russian propaganda text The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. There is a feeling that casting of Jews tends to lean away from depicting them as attractive. After all, when Jews cast someone to play a Jew, we cast Charlton Heston and when others cast someone to play a Jew, they cast Seth Rogen. While it is generally true that images of Jews with overly prominent noses induce a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach, I do think that it’s important to caveat when that feeling is and is not justified. 

In Maestro, Cooper is not depicting a fictional Jewish character where there was a decision that, in order to have them be recognizably Jewish to the audience, they were going to rely on stereotypes. He is depicting a real person who, as his children have stated, had a more prominent nose. This does not mean that he was not a handsome man, he was just a handsome man with a large nose. This difference is important. Those involved in the making of Maestro are trying to make Cooper look more like Bernstein; they are making artistic and costuming decisions. This is very different from when fictional Jewish female characters are depicted as rich and spoiled or when imaginary Jewish men have large noses and are concerned with getting the best deal. This is not to say that it may not turn out that the nose is something to take issue with. If the only recognition of Bernstein’s Jewishness in the film when it debuts is the prosthetic nose, this is a conversation that could perhaps be revisited. But at present, I personally intend to defer to the judgment of the Bernstein family who support this decision as taking steps to make Cooper more closely resemble their father. 

The second major complaint that has been raised is around authenticity casting. This is a topic that has surfaced with increasing regularity as we engage in more discussions of whether individuals who are not members of certain ethnic, racial, or other particularly minority groups should be depicting them on the screen. In 2018, Scarlett Johansson dropped out of the role of Dante “Tex” Gill, a transgender man who ran illicit massage parlors in the 1970s, following backlash that the part should have gone to a transgender person (five years later the film has not been made). 

Comedian Sarah Silverman and writer David Baddiel have been perhaps the most outspoken regarding authenticity casting for Jewish characters. They have raised the issue of how often Jewish characters are depicted by non-Jewish actors. In the context of Maestro many have been saying that Jake Gyllenhaal, who is Jewish, should have been cast in the role instead of Cooper who isn’t. And yes, all things being equal, I agree that we should strive to provide opportunities for actors from minority groups to depict members of their own group. By which I mean that if the quality of the performance you are going to get will be the same, err on the side of authenticity casting, I guess. Though making this our default runs the very real risk of boxing actors into niches where when there is no Indigenous or Black or Asian or Jewish character, they are no longer able to get work. And given that films and theatrical performances are art and actors are artists, are we no longer going to embrace artistic freedom to make creative casting choices? But I digress. To me, this is not a case where all things are equal. Cooper has demonstrated himself to be a versatile and talented actor and director, and while Gyllenhaal has given some wonderful performances, I personally don’t believe that this is a situation where we are comparing apples with apples. 

During a not entirely dissimilar hubbub around Helen Mirren, who is not Jewish, portraying Golda Meir in the film Golda, debuting worldwide today, all I could think was that if social media criticism causes her to step away from the film, we will have done ourselves a disservice. Shouldn’t we celebrate the fact that the actress who played the Queen wants to depict one of the most significant Jewish women in modern history? Shouldn’t we be happy that because of significant actors with a large draw like Bradley Cooper, Helen Mirren (Golda, 2023 and Woman in Gold, 2015), Ingrid Bergman (A Woman Called Golda, 1982), Daniel Craig (Defiance, 2008), and others, Jewish stories are being told to a wider audience than they would otherwise reach? This is not to say that we should be reliant on others to do our work for us, but to recognize that we can view them as allies rather than enemies.